14 DAY TRIAL // Dropbox may be a cloud storage company and its success is largely due to the focus of its approach. But the company is expanding, it has now acquired the maker of Mailbox, a popular and recently launched iOS email app.
"Like many of you, when we discovered Mailbox we fell in love—it was simple, delightful, and beautifully engineered. Many have promised to help us with our overflowing inboxes, but the Mailbox team actually delivered," Dropbox explained.
"After spending time with Gentry, Scott, and the team, it became clear that their calling was the same as ours at Dropbox—to solve life’s hidden problems and reimagine the things we do every day," it added.
Dropbox was short on the details of the acquisition or its plans of moving forward. But this was not a talent acquisition, Dropbox wanted the product. Mailbox will continue to be available and developed moving forward.
But that doesn't mean there won't be any links between the Dropbox service and Mailbox, attachment sync is just one very obvious feature. In fact, there are signs that Google is already working on integrating Gmail attachments into Drive.
It should work the other way around, offering a simple way to attach large files to emails, by relying on Dropbox. Again, Google already does that in Gmail.
Dropbox has been on somewhat of an acquisition streak lately. It snapped up Audiogalaxy, a cloud music company, and Snapjoy, a cloud photo management tool.
It's clear that Dropbox wants to become the center of your online life and move beyond just storing your files.
But it's hardly alone, it's competing with big names like Google, Microsoft and plenty of smaller cloud storage providers. Focusing on hot products and mobile could work out great for Dropbox, but there's still a long way to go. One thing's for sure, Dropbox is prepared to pay for it, rumor is it paid up to $100 million for Mailbox.