Dropbox is getting out of the email and photo-sharing game by shuttering Mailbox and Carousel early next year, in a move that could ultimately benefit its enterprise file-sharing customer base. Here are the details from an official company blog post:
In 2013, we acquired Mailbox because we believed in the way it was making mobile email better. In 2014, we launched Carousel to create a new way to experience and share photos. With both, we aspired to extend the simplicity of Dropbox to other parts of our users’ lives.
Building new products is about learning as much as it’s about making. It’s also about tough choices. Over the past few months, we’ve increased our team’s focus on collaboration and simplifying the way people work together. In light of that, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Carousel and Mailbox.
The Carousel and Mailbox teams have built products that are loved by many people and their work will continue to have an impact. We’ll be taking key features from Carousel back to the place where your photos live—in the Dropbox app. We’ll also be using what we’ve learned from Mailbox to build new ways to communicate and collaborate on Dropbox (you can see early signs of this focus with Paper).
POV: A Lesson Learned
"DropBox never should have gotten into the email business," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Alan Lepofsky. "It’s a world that requires specific focus. Microsoft, Google and IBM have teams dedicated to nothing but email. Dropbox needs to just focus on providing great file integration into those main email clients."
"Similar to Evernote, DropBox got away from it’s core business and it did not help them in any way," Lepofsky adds. "In a time where enterprise file-sharing is becoming a commodity, the niche vendors need to focus on what additional functionality they can provide over Microsoft, Google and IBM’s services."
And that is apparently what Dropbox intends to do, based on its blog post. The company revealed in November that it has 150,000 business customers, with 50,000 of them gained in the previous 10 months. With a renewed focus on innovation in the core product, Dropbox customers and prospects stand to benefit.
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