In an effort to direct its efforts more towards the business/enterprise sector, Dropbox is pulling the plug on two of its most popular consumer-oriented apps, Mailbox and Carousel. The news is a tad bit surprising as both apps were developed by inspiring, new developers with potential and were critically acclaimed.
Mailbox was brought for $100 million by Dropbox in just 2013 and was popular for its speed and clean interface for reducing email clutter. Carousel organizes the photos and videos in the user’s phone from Dropbox. Both the apps, currently lying at ranks 233 and 271 on the App Store respectively, are just not popular enough anymore.
The People Behind Mailbox and Carousel
Its worth noting here that the founder of Mailbox has long left the company while the CEO of Carousel is staying as an adviser for a short term. These moves come in the wake of Dropbox directing more of its efforts towards its upcoming collaborative tool, Paper.
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.
What You Need to Know About the Apps Shutdown
Now that the news has been announced, both Mailbox and Carousel will be dead by 26th of February, 2016 and March 31, 2016, respectively. You don’t really need to worry about the data as Mailbox is a client that works on Gmail while the Carousel photos will be available in Dropbox for you.
Concluding Thoughts
The battle for business users will be difficult since Dropbox faces competition from giants such as Google and Apple who both offer their own solutions. Its 150,000 business users are a stark contrast to the 400 million user base that it boasts. Dropbox’s recent move to shutter its apps signify a renewed focus towards the business user base. It remains to be seen how Dropbox will respond to the brave new world of cloud storage that it itself revolutionized once upon a time.
