Imagine iCloud’s ‘Documents in the Cloud’ feature fuzed with Dropbox. Or MobileMe’s iDisk only a million times faster and more reliable. That could have been one of the features launching alongside iOS 5 this fall, with reports Apple made an $800 million bid for Dropbox.
According to “second-hand sources” for Business Insider, Apple bid up to $800 million for Dropbox, but the online storage service turned down a move to Cupertino because it wanted to remain independent:
Enterprise software-as-a-service company Citrix and Apple took a long look at Dropbox’s books.
They saw that Dropbox revenues would reach $100 million this year.
Apple, we’re told, eventually offered $800 million.
Dropbox has since raised a new round of funding at a whopping $4 billion valuation.
The Dropbox service isn’t too similar to iDisk — an Apple service currently part of MobileMe. However, as a MobileMe subscriber, I can say that Apple’s service is nowhere near as quick, and nowhere near as reliable. I use Dropbox on a daily basis — after switching from iDisk — and I’ve never hit a snag with it. iDisk, on the other hand, was a different story.
The prospect of having Dropbox functionality as part of iCloud, seamlessly syncing with my Macs and iOS devices, is a very attractive one. And I for one would have been rooting for Apple to acquire Dropbox.
[via MacRumors]
