When the Cloud first became popular it reminded a lot of us of wrapping our head around the term “internet” in 1994. As such we immediately began asking ourselves the questions we asked in the mid-90’s: Is this secure? Where does all the information GO? Can we play music, watch videos? What is possible?
Dropbox, one of the first cloud service providers and a consistent industry leader has taken our comfort with the cloud and expanded it to new reaches. Their service is consistently rated as one of the best in the industry, and now their innovation seems to be making inroads on the bigger services (Google Drive and Amazon Cloud Drive). Dropbox recently announced video streaming on mobile devices, which means that movies that you own and love to share DON’T have to be logged on to your Android phone.
For anyone who uses their Android phone to show quick presentations, or even just videos of their son’s football game, the ability to access the information remotely is an absolute benefit in terms of mobile storage and usability. What Dropbox has done is to take the information which clogs our computers, phones and third devices and given us the ability to focus that storage on memory-gobbling software, like games. The change in accessibility includes a one-push streaming, meaning that the client will open from the file folder with no third-party necessary to open and play the video.
The videos will add to the growing market share for Dropbox who recently offered seamless file access and social integration components to their services in the hopes of boosting membership. The race for an increase in user share is important. Without a supporting subscription base innovation by smaller stake companies like Dropbox could become stifled. The video streaming capability is certainly going to propel the larger services to match the offerings of Dropbox, which in turn improves the user experience and helps foster the ultra-competitive marketplace that has thus far catapulted new creations in front of mobile file sharing users at a rapid pace.
The riddles of the Internet have almost all been solved, and increasingly so are those of the cloud. Safer than ever, with one-touch access to music, file-sharing, and now streaming video, the consumer and business public has seen an increase in productivity. Dropbox, by no means the smallest player in the arena, has done something extraordinary with their product, and like they have in the past, you can expect the big boys to follow suit. Just don’t expect Dropbox to stop their quest to become the leader in cloud storage solutions because they innovate. ON the contrary if we’ve learned anything from Dropbox it’s that they are primed to keep the pressure on the larger services and take what business they can.
For users of the cloud, Dropbox isn’t just the leader in mobile cloud innovation they’re the spark plug for innovation across the market place.
Photo via 9ifree