LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE 360-MIDDLE EAST: Cloud-storage pioneer Dropbox provided an insight into its mobile partnership with Samsung, with Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen (pictured) yesterday claiming its deal with the South Korean vendor has helped boost smartphone sales for the firm while also revealing the struggles faced by rivals such as HTC, Sony and ZTE.

Dropbox and Samsung struck a deal which saw the cloud-based file storage service embedded as an app on Android-based Samsung devices. As Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, Head of Mobile at Dropbox, explained, the high-profile deal was of benefit to both parties: “The big challenge for us was growth – there are so many cloud services out there, the user is spoilt for choice. That’s why we worked with guys like Samsung – Samsung is differentiating itself through amazing hardware and they want to be the biggest. For Dropbox the deal gave us instant distribution, while Samsung got a great service.”

Indeed, Dropbox claims the partnership has been a major win for Samsung: “18 percent of people who knew about the bundling said they bought Samsung handsets because of this partnership,” said Fjeldsoe-Nielsen. He also said Samsung device owners who use the Dropbox service are 4 per cent less likely to move to another device manufacturer than those not signed up to the mobile cloud service.

It was Samsung’s low customer churn rate that attracted Dropbox to the smartphone giant. During his presentation Fjeldsoe-Nielsen revealed data suggesting just how much of a loyal customer base Samsung and Apple enjoy compared to some of its rivals.

dropbox1

And Fjeldsoe-Nielsen also highlighted churn rates among operators globally and in the Middle East, as Dropbox considers striking exclusive carrier deals in each country in addition to its Samsung partnership. “We can help operators reduce churn, they can help us promote Dropbox,” he noted.

dropbox2

Dropbox3

Launched in 2008, Dropbox is seeing great growth. Fjeldsoe-Nielsen said it has more than 200 million users, and paying users in over 190 countries. 1 billion new files are saved each day, with 2 million businesses connected.