The rise and rise of Dropbox shows no sign of abating, and today it has been announced that the company has partnered up with Deutsche Telekom (DT) in a deal that will see the service preloaded onto the smartphones of consumers living in a number of European countries.
For those of you who don’t know, Dropbox is a file storing and sharing service used by (according to figures released by the company) 300 million people globally, and a whopping 97% of Fortune 500 companies. We use Dropbox here at ICS-digital for various purposes ranging from project management to company training and, at the moment at least, it does seem to beat all comparative services hands-down.
The company has experienced astronomical growth over the last year and a half, but with growth and exciting partnerships like today’s DT deal comes significant and imminent challenges.
The challenge now for Dropbox will be two-fold.
Firstly, the company will face the challenge of maintaining the fundamental features of the service that have made it such an attractive proposition for other companies to partner up with in the first place, whilst battling in the face of the inevitable demands placed on the service by the very partners it signs deals with.
Secondly, and more importantly, with the number of people using the service increasing every day, the demographic of their user base will undoubtedly expand, diversify, and change. It therefore goes without saying that key to the long-term success of the service will be the company’s ability to appease the Average Joe, who perhaps has little to no interest in complex technology, whilst also serving the complex needs of large-scale businesses within the technology sector itself.
The signs right now, however, are good; Marc Leibowitz, VP at Dropbox, has this very week stated that striking the right balance between pleasing confident technology consumers and those who aren’t quite as tech-savvy is the primary cause of sleepless nights among Dropbox employees.
So, for now, Dropbox can celebrate the signing of a deal that will reach millions of DT subscribers when it rolls out on Android handsets a few months from now, but the key soon after those celebrations have died down will be figuring out precisely how to make those sleepless nights a thing of the past, and quickly.
Charlotte is chief whip when it comes to making sure words are in order at ICS-digital. You can get in touch with her directly at charlotte.green@ics-digital.com
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