Box bets on Android in business with new update, gives all users 50GB storage free
Cloud storage powerhouse Box has updated its Android app with tons of new features. And to celebrate, the company is giving away 50GB of free storage to any Android user who logs in during the next 30 days.
Context & Ripple Effects
Box is timing its push into Android-for-business against the platform's scale: Gartner put Android above 50% of worldwide smartphone sales in Q3 2011, and just two days before this story ComScore-style installed-base data showed Android overtaking Apple in the UK installed base. The company is treating Android not as a second-tier client but as the volume channel for enterprise file access.
The giveaway is aggressive even by 2012 cloud-storage standards — 50GB free to any Android user who logs in within 30 days — and the story traveled unusually widely for an app update, picked up same-week by TechCrunch, GigaOM, Computerworld, PC Magazine, and Gizmodo among others.
First-order effects
- Android users who log in during the 30-day window get 50GB of free Box storage, and Box's updated Android app becomes its flagship business-mobile client rather than an afterthought to iOS.
- The promotion converts Android's massive activation numbers (3.7 million devices activated over Christmas 2011 alone, per Google) directly into Box registered accounts at zero acquisition cost per user beyond storage.
Second-order effects
- Rival storage providers face pressure to match the free-capacity bar on mobile; once 50GB is a login bonus rather than a paid tier, capacity stops being the differentiator and feature depth does.
- Enterprise buyers gain leverage: with Box courting individual employees on their personal Android devices, IT departments see consumer-grade generosity reshape expectations about what business storage should cost per seat.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, cloud storage commoditizes on price and consolidates around whoever owns the workflow layer — document editing, sharing permissions, application integrations — rather than raw gigabytes.
- Android's majority share of smartphone sales makes it the default first target for enterprise software distribution, shifting vendor roadmaps from iOS-first to platform-neutral.
The trend: Cloud storage is moving from selling capacity to giving it away as a customer-acquisition lever, with vendors racing to own the enterprise work layer on top of free gigabytes.