Dive Brief:

• Dropbox is expected to go public this year, but opinions vary on whether the company can successfully transition from its core as a free consumer app to a successful business.  

• The company was valued at $10 billion in 2014, but the following year some investors cut the value of the shares on their books by up to 50%.

• Meanwhile, people familiar with the company’s finances say business is booming, with sales at more than $750 million a year and about 10 million new users every month, the MIT Technology Review reports.

Dive Insight:

Opinions vary on whether a company that offers a free file storage service can find enough paying customers to make a great business. But the company has been working to expand its offerings, and finding some success in expanding into the enterprise space with Dropbox Business, the enterprise version of the company’s original offering.

CEO and co-founder Drew Houston has pushed the company into the productivity and collaboration software area, which could give corporate customers more to buy from Dropbox, though it will face competition from Google, Microsoft, Box, Atlassian, Slack, and other companies investigating how to change the way work is done.

But with name recognition and hundreds of millions of loyal fans in its corner, Dropbox could potentially surprise even its skeptics.