Dissolution of Evernote’s Japanese subsidiary, poor service leading to misunderstanding that the app has ended, lack of notice spurring user abandonment – ITmedia Mobile

Evernote (Chuo-ku, Tokyo), the Japanese subsidiary of the online memo service Evernote, will be dissolved. The announcement was made in the official gazette, which is used to publicize laws, government ordinances, etc. Users expressed confusion over the sudden announcement. There is also a false rumor that the service has ended.

Evernote was founded in 2000 by Stepan Pachikov. As smartphones and PCs have become more popular, Evernote’s name has become well-known as it has become possible to handle not only text such as memos, but also images, videos, audio, PDFs, and a variety of other files.

Japanese support was achieved in March 2010, and a Japanese corporation, Evernote, was established in June of the same year. Furthermore, Evernote became more convenient as it could be used on i-mode compatible feature phones (the most popular mobile phones in the same year).

In 2014, Evernote received a $20 million investment (approximately 2.3 billion yen at the time) from the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, allowing Evernote to display and quote Nikkei articles.

Evernote had been focusing on the Japanese market, but in January 2023, Evernote was officially acquired by European technology company Bending Spoons. Bending Spoons is a company that provides video and image editing tools.

In November of the same year, they announced changes to the free plan. The number of notebooks a user can create is now limited to one, down from a maximum of 250, and the number of notebooks a user can create has been significantly reduced from a maximum of 100,000 to a maximum of 50. This caused a backlash, and as a result, it was criticized as a “reform.”

Some of the actions we have taken so far include providing guidance through “Evernote Help and Learning,” which I think has led to a sense of security for users.

This time, I focused a lot of attention on the page called “Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Evernote Acquisition.” The page describes the acquisition by Bending Spoons, but right after the summary there’s a subheading that says, “Will Evernote go away?”

What this means is the sense of security mentioned earlier. Announcements and information regarding acquisitions are usually sent to the media in the form of news releases or press releases, but Evernote provides Japanese users with a detailed overview of the acquisition in Japanese, as well as information that users may be interested in. To answer your questions, we published a page called Frequently Asked Questions regarding the Evernote acquisition.

Evernote is supposed to value its Japanese users, but the dissolution of its Japanese subsidiary is not posted in the “Notices” section that can be viewed by users and non-users. Even when I look at Evernote Japan’s official X account (@EvernoteJP), I can’t find any information regarding the dissolution of the Japanese corporation.

Naturally, the internal workings of the Japanese corporation are not visible to outsiders, but the account has stopped updating after posting “AI search has arrived in Evernote.” It appears that public relations activities have stopped at a certain point.

In response to the dissolution of the Japanese corporation that was revealed this time, some users have been posting questions on X, such as “Will the service end?” “Will it become unusable?” As of 21:00 on the 26th, there is no notification that the service will end, and it can be downloaded and used from the App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.

However, once the label of “service deterioration” has been applied, it is difficult to remove it easily, and the lack of guidance to users is likely to spur user abandonment.

Related article

Related Links