Dropbox and Box, often viewed as rivals, have distinctly different business models. Dropbox, a newly public company, targets consumers with a bottom-up approach, focusing on individual users and small businesses. It has 500 million registered users, with 11 million paying for the service. On the other hand, Box, a public company since 2015, is an enterprise software business offering cloud content management and file sharing service for businesses. It has 82,000 paying businesses, with 69% of the Fortune 500 as customers.
Dropbox’s bottom-up strategy could be risky, as it relies on converting free users to paying ones. Box’s top-down approach targets large businesses directly, which can be more lucrative but also more challenging due to the lengthy sales cycle and complexity of enterprise sales.
While both companies operate in the cloud content space, their divergent strategies make it clear that they are not direct competitors. They co-exist, catering to different markets within the same industry. Their contrasting growth trajectories further illustrate this point. Dropbox’s revenue grew 31% in 2017, while Box’s grew by 27%. Dropbox’s net losses decreased by 47%, while Box’s dropped by 32%. These figures underline the companies’ different approaches and customer bases.
Go to source article: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/dropbox-and-box-were-never-competitors/