11 ms·

Dropbox Owns Cloud Storage on Mobile

88 points by droidz 10y ago

larrik 10y ago
From among CloudRail powered mobile apps. Meaning iCloud isn't considered at all. Interesting finding, but needs an asterisk.
- droidz 10y ago
  True! It is just among Dropbox GoogleDrive Box OneDrive. Also Egnyte is not considered (or just too small?) even it is supported by cloudrail.
- 0xCMP 10y ago
  Yea, but lets say we just pick iOS users, how do you tell they use iCloud over Dropbox when some things do not give a choice? This is probably as good as we're gonna get from a third-party.
  - droidz 10y ago
    I guess every iOS user uses iCloud somehow. But for me it's just backup because it is so limited to the Apple world. Do they even have a public API?
    - NEDM64 10y ago
      iCloud is purely optional. You just need any email address for an AppleID for a functional phone with AppStore, notifications, etc.
    - nicky0 10y ago
      Yes: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/DataManagement/Conceptual/CloutKitWebServicesReference/Introduction/Introduction.html https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Da...
      - 0xCMP 10y ago
        Oh wow, I never knew about that.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- niftich 10y ago
  I don't claim to represent the average app developer but I've never so much as heard of CloudRail, them claiming to be a "Unified API integration leader" and all. I can't find them being written about by someone like Gartner; some other sources claim that they're a European startup in the IoT integration space. I guess I'm not sure what to make of some unknown-to-me company's study on usage of its own SDK for cloud storage; and this study being posted in 'news release'-style on their blog. To me, these are huge grains of salt.
  - droidz 10y ago
    I've heard of them before a couple times but frankly, I don't know how good the source is. Just considered it interesting and I'm a Dropbox only user as well.
    - camiller 10y ago
      I'm a "use all the free space I can get from whichever provider" user. Across the providers I use I have 207.25 GB of storage.Dropbox, Drive, Box, and OneDrive all integrate with Astro file manager on my phone. Media Fire and AT&T Locker thru only their own apps. Astro may or may not use cloud rail internally to abstract away the apis for each different server. Although Astro does not offer egnyte so probably not. That doesn't include Amazon's unlimited free storage for photos with our family prime account. Oh, and a 1 TB Western Digital personal cloud drive...
      - Cyph0n 10y ago
        I decided that it's not worth the hassle to keep track of so many accounts, so I fork over $2/month to get 100 GB on Google Drive. I was going to get OneDrive, but I have no need for the whole Office 365 shenanigans.
        camiller 10y ago
        I do understand that point of view. And did consider it, but the way I use the different services is segmented by what I use them for which works for me. box is the backup of just my Calibre library, amazon photos, google drive is just documents, spreadsheets, etc.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Does iCloud even allow storing arbitrary files? I can't even figure out how to drag and drop a file from my mac to the icloud drive, let alone retrieve it from the iOS side. I don't think you can compare iCloud with general purpose storage; it seems angled towards iOS app integrations instead.
  - olentangy 10y ago
    Um, it's trivial to drag any file on a Mac into iCloud. Look in the sidebar in the Finder, between Favorites and Devices is iCloud. Click there to see the contents of your iCloud storage. On iOS, the iCloud Drive app lets you see everything in iCloud storage as well. Certainly iOS app integration is important in iCloud, but it functions perfectly well for any other use too.
    - eridius 10y ago
      In the Finder, iCloud Drive is also available in the Go menu, or with the keyboard shortcut ⌘⇧I
  - mattkevan 10y ago
    macOS Sierra syncs the desktop and documents folders across all your Macs and makes the files available in the iOS iCloud Drive app as well. It's really handy - I've pretty much stopped using Dropbox, except to share files with people on other platforms. With a few (and lessening) limitations, iCloud is becoming the general user-accessible filesystem that iOS has lacked since the beginning. All that's needed now is a download manager in safari.
    - danudey 10y ago
      And a family plan, so I can pay for higher tiers and share them between my wife and I.
clumsysmurf 10y ago
I hope on Android they support SAF (Storage Access Framework) soon. Since I don't want to include N cloud SDKs for each point-to-point integration, my app only supports what SAF does -- and sadly dropbox support is missing.
- droidz 10y ago
  isn't that what cloudrail claims to provide?
hh2222 10y ago
It would be awesome if they put a simple text editor in their IOS and web app.
Wintamute 10y ago
I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the free accounts and the accounts that max out their paid storage. I don't know why people put up with it?
- izacus 10y ago
  Because it's the only cloud provider that has reliable cross-platform syncing solution and works extremely well? As soon as you try their competitors (Drive, Box, iCloud) you find out just how utterly crappy they are as soon as you need to share files with other people. Dropbox does it seamlessly. Bankrolling free accounts so students can have their thesis backed up is a small price to pay for that.
- jakebasile 10y ago
  Dropbox's pricing is indeed frustrating, on both ends of the spectrum. Small time users pay a lot more than competitors so they can store a reasonable amount, and if you want to store a lot of stuff you're shit out of luck as the only option is to get their "team" storage which has more stuff than a single user needs. I don't even really need sharing, I can send stuff via email or other methods for that - I want personal file syncing. I've been using iCloud Drive recently, and it works pretty well. Maybe if Apple ever gets around to releasing new Macs they'll bump the default storage level and cover more people because as it stands it's at 5GB which isn't competitive anymore.
- yid 10y ago
  > I don't know why people put up with it? Lock-in? Once you have a few gigs up on Dropbox, it's a bit of a challenge transferring it elsewhere.
  - rootusrootus 10y ago
    I disagree. As a long time paying Dropbox customer, I reevaluate each year, including copying all my data over to a competing provider to see how it shakes out. For all the big providers it's drag and drop. So far what keeps me coming back to Dropbox is that the other solutions have sync reliability issues on one or more of the platforms I use (we're a diverse family, with everything from a Linux server to OSX to Windows 10 to Android and iOS mobile devices sharing the same Dropbox account).
azinman2 10y ago
Nothing can be concluded from this data as is. It's by usage on their platform. A totally different way to read this would be Dropbox needs the most help from 3rd parties. Another would be that Dropbox is the platform that people build for the most.
danatkinson 10y ago
I'm struggling to understand why. It has a very poor business model, security issues and the storage for the price just doesn't add up. Google Drive or iCloud are far easier to set up, cheaper, and has oodles more space.
- ing33k 10y ago
  How is a poor business model related to market share ?
  - danatkinson 10y ago
    That's a good question/point and suggests a lack of education of its users of alternatives which are cheaper/better/more reliable.
- chickenbane 10y ago
  Dropbox is currently indispensable for iOS users. Most iOS people I know use Dropbox as the clunky-but-works app-to-app sharing mechanism. Dropbox is not as popular on Android because apps can integrate more naturally. iCloud may be easier and is the probable successor, but Apple has only recently gotten its cloud game together and its free option is only 5GB. Eventually the platforms are going to make using a third party obsolete (arguably already so on Android) so I predict we're at peak Dropbox usage. Especially considering Google's new Pixel phones will store all photos at full resolution for free, I'm sure Apple will at least have to increase their free storage tier.
  - 0xffff2 10y ago
    I'm confused by your comment... I'm a recent convert to iOS from Windows Phone, and I've just kept on using OneDrive for my documents. I'm not even sure what "app-to-app sharing" means. Dropbox definitely isn't indispensable to me.
    - kuschku 10y ago
      For example, creating a file in one app, editing it in another app, sending it to a third app to upload somewhere else. That's hard to do without a filesystem or proper Intents. iOS has neither, so people use Dropbox as filesystem.
KayL 10y ago
dropbox has a better desktop client to share stuff. It makes the difference to end users. But it's slow sync outside US.
joeblau 10y ago
The way I hear Aaron Levie speak, I would have thought Box had more market share.
- jseaidou 10y ago
  Box is more enterprise/business focused.
discodave 10y ago
Given that Apple was spending in the order of $1 billion to store iCloud data in AWS I don't think this claim is exactly credible. Dropbox reportedly had to move 500PB of data off of AWS which at a very naive $0.03 per GB per month would only be around $180MM per year. $0.03 is probably higher than the rate dropbox pays per GB but I'm ignoring network ingress/egress costs. From those back of the envelope calculations I think it's safe to say that iCloud is very likely larger, or at least a similar size to Dropbox. https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/03/magic-pocket-infrastructure/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/03/magic-pocket-infrastr... http://www.pcworld.com/article/3045436/data-center-cloud/apple-said-to-move-part-of-cloud-business-from-aws-to-google.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3045436/data-center-cloud/app...
- droidz 10y ago
  Maybe. This report seems to just take Dropbox Google Microsoft and Box into account. But is iCloud really that big when you talk about usage? They store tons of data but most of it might be just iOS backups which are activated by default for every user. Consider that usage or not.
  - s3r3nity 10y ago
    I think so - and the fact that it's so in the background speaks to how well the user experience is designed for iCloud. Apple pretty much surreptitiously hides the backup of contacts, photos, calendars, email (yes - a lot of people use iCloud mail), and lastly documents. The fact that Apple was so late to the game on iCloud Drive was that a lot of the shit that the average person doesn't want to manually back-up and monitor are handled in the background by Apple ("magically" to use their term.) I personally love Dropbox, but I would find it a nuisance to manage my contacts, or anything else beyond my documents and occasional photos backup. Therefore, regardless of manual input necessary, it should still count as usage. I imagine a lot of people store backups on Dropbox, and that looks like it's counted in the article. Yet, I am kind of surprised that the prevalence of Android software doesn't correlate to Google Drive market share.
    - 10y ago

88 points by droidz 10y ago

From among CloudRail powered mobile apps. Meaning iCloud isn't considered at all. Interesting finding, but needs an asterisk.

droidz 10y ago
True! It is just among Dropbox GoogleDrive Box OneDrive. Also Egnyte is not considered (or just too small?) even it is supported by cloudrail.
0xCMP 10y ago
Yea, but lets say we just pick iOS users, how do you tell they use iCloud over Dropbox when some things do not give a choice? This is probably as good as we're gonna get from a third-party.
- droidz 10y ago
  I guess every iOS user uses iCloud somehow. But for me it's just backup because it is so limited to the Apple world. Do they even have a public API?
  - NEDM64 10y ago
    iCloud is purely optional. You just need any email address for an AppleID for a functional phone with AppStore, notifications, etc.
  - nicky0 10y ago
    Yes: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/DataManagement/Conceptual/CloutKitWebServicesReference/Introduction/Introduction.html https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Da...
    - 0xCMP 10y ago
      Oh wow, I never knew about that.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
niftich 10y ago
I don't claim to represent the average app developer but I've never so much as heard of CloudRail, them claiming to be a "Unified API integration leader" and all. I can't find them being written about by someone like Gartner; some other sources claim that they're a European startup in the IoT integration space. I guess I'm not sure what to make of some unknown-to-me company's study on usage of its own SDK for cloud storage; and this study being posted in 'news release'-style on their blog. To me, these are huge grains of salt.
- droidz 10y ago
  I've heard of them before a couple times but frankly, I don't know how good the source is. Just considered it interesting and I'm a Dropbox only user as well.
  - camiller 10y ago
    I'm a "use all the free space I can get from whichever provider" user. Across the providers I use I have 207.25 GB of storage.Dropbox, Drive, Box, and OneDrive all integrate with Astro file manager on my phone. Media Fire and AT&T Locker thru only their own apps. Astro may or may not use cloud rail internally to abstract away the apis for each different server. Although Astro does not offer egnyte so probably not. That doesn't include Amazon's unlimited free storage for photos with our family prime account. Oh, and a 1 TB Western Digital personal cloud drive...
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      I decided that it's not worth the hassle to keep track of so many accounts, so I fork over $2/month to get 100 GB on Google Drive. I was going to get OneDrive, but I have no need for the whole Office 365 shenanigans.
      - camiller 10y ago
        I do understand that point of view. And did consider it, but the way I use the different services is segmented by what I use them for which works for me. box is the backup of just my Calibre library, amazon photos, google drive is just documents, spreadsheets, etc.
duaneb 10y ago
Does iCloud even allow storing arbitrary files? I can't even figure out how to drag and drop a file from my mac to the icloud drive, let alone retrieve it from the iOS side. I don't think you can compare iCloud with general purpose storage; it seems angled towards iOS app integrations instead.
- olentangy 10y ago
  Um, it's trivial to drag any file on a Mac into iCloud. Look in the sidebar in the Finder, between Favorites and Devices is iCloud. Click there to see the contents of your iCloud storage. On iOS, the iCloud Drive app lets you see everything in iCloud storage as well. Certainly iOS app integration is important in iCloud, but it functions perfectly well for any other use too.
  - eridius 10y ago
    In the Finder, iCloud Drive is also available in the Go menu, or with the keyboard shortcut ⌘⇧I
- mattkevan 10y ago
  macOS Sierra syncs the desktop and documents folders across all your Macs and makes the files available in the iOS iCloud Drive app as well. It's really handy - I've pretty much stopped using Dropbox, except to share files with people on other platforms. With a few (and lessening) limitations, iCloud is becoming the general user-accessible filesystem that iOS has lacked since the beginning. All that's needed now is a download manager in safari.
  - danudey 10y ago
    And a family plan, so I can pay for higher tiers and share them between my wife and I.

clumsysmurf 10y ago

I hope on Android they support SAF (Storage Access Framework) soon. Since I don't want to include N cloud SDKs for each point-to-point integration, my app only supports what SAF does -- and sadly dropbox support is missing.

droidz 10y ago
isn't that what cloudrail claims to provide?

hh2222 10y ago

It would be awesome if they put a simple text editor in their IOS and web app.

Wintamute 10y ago

I really don't understand Dropbox. For the average user that wants to store, say, a few tens of GBs Dropbox costs $9.99 a month. Nevermind it gives 1TB total, most people don't need that much. iCloud, for example, costs $0.99/month. That's an _order of magnitude_ more expensive. Whichever way you slice it, it seems like Dropbox's core user base, that pays but doesn't take full advantage of the 1TB is bank-rolling the free accounts and the accounts that max out their paid storage. I don't know why people put up with it?

izacus 10y ago
Because it's the only cloud provider that has reliable cross-platform syncing solution and works extremely well? As soon as you try their competitors (Drive, Box, iCloud) you find out just how utterly crappy they are as soon as you need to share files with other people. Dropbox does it seamlessly. Bankrolling free accounts so students can have their thesis backed up is a small price to pay for that.
jakebasile 10y ago
Dropbox's pricing is indeed frustrating, on both ends of the spectrum. Small time users pay a lot more than competitors so they can store a reasonable amount, and if you want to store a lot of stuff you're shit out of luck as the only option is to get their "team" storage which has more stuff than a single user needs. I don't even really need sharing, I can send stuff via email or other methods for that - I want personal file syncing. I've been using iCloud Drive recently, and it works pretty well. Maybe if Apple ever gets around to releasing new Macs they'll bump the default storage level and cover more people because as it stands it's at 5GB which isn't competitive anymore.
yid 10y ago
> I don't know why people put up with it? Lock-in? Once you have a few gigs up on Dropbox, it's a bit of a challenge transferring it elsewhere.
- rootusrootus 10y ago
  I disagree. As a long time paying Dropbox customer, I reevaluate each year, including copying all my data over to a competing provider to see how it shakes out. For all the big providers it's drag and drop. So far what keeps me coming back to Dropbox is that the other solutions have sync reliability issues on one or more of the platforms I use (we're a diverse family, with everything from a Linux server to OSX to Windows 10 to Android and iOS mobile devices sharing the same Dropbox account).

azinman2 10y ago

Nothing can be concluded from this data as is. It's by usage on their platform. A totally different way to read this would be Dropbox needs the most help from 3rd parties. Another would be that Dropbox is the platform that people build for the most.

danatkinson 10y ago

I'm struggling to understand why. It has a very poor business model, security issues and the storage for the price just doesn't add up. Google Drive or iCloud are far easier to set up, cheaper, and has oodles more space.

ing33k 10y ago
How is a poor business model related to market share ?
- danatkinson 10y ago
  That's a good question/point and suggests a lack of education of its users of alternatives which are cheaper/better/more reliable.
chickenbane 10y ago
Dropbox is currently indispensable for iOS users. Most iOS people I know use Dropbox as the clunky-but-works app-to-app sharing mechanism. Dropbox is not as popular on Android because apps can integrate more naturally. iCloud may be easier and is the probable successor, but Apple has only recently gotten its cloud game together and its free option is only 5GB. Eventually the platforms are going to make using a third party obsolete (arguably already so on Android) so I predict we're at peak Dropbox usage. Especially considering Google's new Pixel phones will store all photos at full resolution for free, I'm sure Apple will at least have to increase their free storage tier.
- 0xffff2 10y ago
  I'm confused by your comment... I'm a recent convert to iOS from Windows Phone, and I've just kept on using OneDrive for my documents. I'm not even sure what "app-to-app sharing" means. Dropbox definitely isn't indispensable to me.
  - kuschku 10y ago
    For example, creating a file in one app, editing it in another app, sending it to a third app to upload somewhere else. That's hard to do without a filesystem or proper Intents. iOS has neither, so people use Dropbox as filesystem.

KayL 10y ago

dropbox has a better desktop client to share stuff. It makes the difference to end users. But it's slow sync outside US.

joeblau 10y ago

The way I hear Aaron Levie speak, I would have thought Box had more market share.

jseaidou 10y ago
Box is more enterprise/business focused.

discodave 10y ago

Given that Apple was spending in the order of $1 billion to store iCloud data in AWS I don't think this claim is exactly credible. Dropbox reportedly had to move 500PB of data off of AWS which at a very naive $0.03 per GB per month would only be around $180MM per year. $0.03 is probably higher than the rate dropbox pays per GB but I'm ignoring network ingress/egress costs. From those back of the envelope calculations I think it's safe to say that iCloud is very likely larger, or at least a similar size to Dropbox. https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/03/magic-pocket-infrastructure/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/03/magic-pocket-infrastr... http://www.pcworld.com/article/3045436/data-center-cloud/apple-said-to-move-part-of-cloud-business-from-aws-to-google.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3045436/data-center-cloud/app...

droidz 10y ago
Maybe. This report seems to just take Dropbox Google Microsoft and Box into account. But is iCloud really that big when you talk about usage? They store tons of data but most of it might be just iOS backups which are activated by default for every user. Consider that usage or not.
- s3r3nity 10y ago
  I think so - and the fact that it's so in the background speaks to how well the user experience is designed for iCloud. Apple pretty much surreptitiously hides the backup of contacts, photos, calendars, email (yes - a lot of people use iCloud mail), and lastly documents. The fact that Apple was so late to the game on iCloud Drive was that a lot of the shit that the average person doesn't want to manually back-up and monitor are handled in the background by Apple ("magically" to use their term.) I personally love Dropbox, but I would find it a nuisance to manage my contacts, or anything else beyond my documents and occasional photos backup. Therefore, regardless of manual input necessary, it should still count as usage. I imagine a lot of people store backups on Dropbox, and that looks like it's counted in the article. Yet, I am kind of surprised that the prevalence of Android software doesn't correlate to Google Drive market share.
  - 10y ago