Back in March, Google announced that they were massively slashing the storage prices for their customers. Previously $4.99/month for 100 GB, and $49.99/month for 1 TB, they cut the prices to $1.99 and $9.99, respectively. Beyond that, they are charging $99.99 per 10 TB, meaning that 40 TB will set you back $399.96. Now, in and of itself, that is interesting, but when compared to the pricing of competitiors, it gets downright impressive.
For example, Dropbox charges $9.99 per month for 100 GB while Apple’s iCloud service runs you $20 per year (or just about $1.67 per month, billed annually) for 10 GB.
Apple and Google have their market dominance funnelling users to them; Apple because iOS users have the option of using iCloud to back up their iOS device, and Google because GMail users use Google Drive for email already, Dropbox has no such funnelling of users and income. Hence, their lack of movement on the pricing front seems ill adviced to me.
Dropbox are banking on their existing user base staying faithful, while attempting to innovate on whatever front they can. The only place where they have an advantage, and only over one of their competitors, is the iOS app’s automatic photo upload feature, which I would expect to see implemented by Google shortly.
Unless Dropbox find a way to remain relevant, I don’t think they will last long. Time will tell.
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