BackNote-taking diversified
Unique usage trends and why Evernote believes multiple smartphone apps are the best solution
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How popular can a note-taking app be? The answer is—very. Evernote, for instance, remains one of the hottest apps across all platforms—be it Apple’s iOS or Google’s Windows. Over time, it has evolved from an app that can take simple notes to one that can scan business cards and link them to the respective LinkedIn profiles, or even let you scribble notes and comments on an image or a document. We spoke to Evernote’s Ken Gullicksen, chief strategy officer, and Troy Malone, general manager for the Asia-Pacific region, who were in New Delhi recently, about the issues created by multiple apps and the plans to put Evernote on newer platforms. Edited excerpts:
How big is Evernote’s user base, globally and specifically in India?
Gullicksen: We have crossed 100 million users worldwide, and 2.1 million users in India. We have noticed that people are using the app across multiple devices they own—desktop, laptops, smartphones and tablets—because they want everything synced with the comfort of picking up any device they want to at any time.
What is helping the growth? What kind of usage trends have you seen on the Evernote app?
Malone: Despite the multi-platform usage, we see that in certain markets the time spent using the app is higher on Android devices. This is true in India and South Korea, for example. Equally, other platforms take the lead in different countries. Over time, more affordable Android phones in India have started coming with better hardware, which has improved the overall phone usage experience. That has helped us too. There is a massive diversity in use cases. In the Asia-Pacific region, we see a lot of people are using Evernote for journaling purposes, be it jotting down thoughts, drafting points for meetings or planning for the week ahead. Over 70% of our users have deployed Evernote for their business needs.
What is the strategy for reaching out to users?
Gullicksen: We rely on word of mouth to get more users. We have always worked to make Evernote an app that you would talk about with your friends. And visually beautiful enough to make your friends ask you about it. We also rely on handset partnerships. In India, we preload the apps on devices from most major smartphone makers, including the likes of Panasonic, Micromax, Sony, Nokia, BlackBerry and Samsung.
Malone: We have never really had marketing budgets for full-fledged advertising, which is why word of mouth is very important for us. And the fact that you get Evernote preloaded on many handsets helps us get the app out to new users.
How does Evernote earn money?
Gullicksen: Our only income is through premium subscriptions. At no point have we ever, nor will we in future, sell user data for earning revenue. We are extremely attentive to the fact that user data security and privacy is important, and compromising that for revenue is not an option. An interesting recent development is that a lot of these premium subscriptions are coming from business establishments, for multiple devices. The premium subscription for businesses is available in certain countries, and will be launched in India soon.
Evernote has a wide range of apps. Isn’t that a risky strategy, because users may get confused?
Gullicksen: Skitch and Penultimate are our other apps. Penultimate is the handwriting app exclusively on iOS at the moment. Skitch is where you can mark and scribble comments on images, documents and PDFs. On the smartphone, people want everything broken down for simplicity. The smaller screen means users like focused apps. We have added as many features as possible to the main Evernote app, like business-card scanning or the handwriting part for example, but streamlined apps are the way forward. When it comes to desktop apps though, it is a different story—everything must be clubbed into one.
What is the plan for the newer platforms, particularly smartwatches?
Malone: We are always looking to embrace newer platforms and technology. In fact, we were amongst the first few third-party apps released for Google Glass. The smartwatch is a major new platform, and we are available on the Android Wear based watches. The idea is to not replicate the phone’s experience on the watch screen, but instead, the watch will work in parallel with the phone. Get a notification on the watch, and that reminds you to pick up the phone and read or update a note. We don’t really know yet how the smartwatch experience will work, but that is the fun bit, because we are learning.
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