One of the longest-running and successful apps on iOS has been Evernote. This note-taking app was an amazing piece of software in the early days of the iPhone. From OCR to web syncing to a complete organizational method, Evernote (for a time) was *THE* note-taking app to use. That road seems to be over in its current form.
Last week Evernote announced they're being acquired by a company named Bending Spoons and the deal will close next year. Kyle Wiggers at TechCrunch has more.
[Evernote CEO Ian] Small, the former CEO of platform-as-a-service company TokBox, came on in 2018. Under his leadership, Evernote hit $100 million in recurring revenue, millions of paying customers and over 250 million users. But it largely failed to keep pace with competitors like Notion, opting to rely heavily on a consumer-focused freemium model while eschewing the kinds of collaboration features embraced by its rivals.
So what does Bending Spoons gain with the purchase? Another feather in its software cap, it’d seem. The European tech company makes apps like video editor Splice, 30 Day Fitness, Live Quiz and photo editor Remini, which combined have about 100 million users.
TechCrunch
Evernote, to me, was one of those "everyone uses it" apps from the early App Store days. It worked so well and I loved the sync feature. But as the years passed, they began putting features behind paywalls and limiting the ways to use the app for free. Normally paid features aren't a problem, but it was the removal of formerly-free features that irked me.
Then in 2016 Apple completely overhauled its Notes app that shipped on all their operating systems. The improvements were night and day. Sync was introduced and it was good. It had markup and photo support. Then OCR was added along with multiple formatting. For me, that was when I could truly leave Evernote in the past. It was good, but Apple one-upped them.
To Evernote's credit, they've stuck around and have kept trying new features. They have always been a good alternative to Notes. However, it is a difficult business to be in. And, as Wiggers said above, Notion is a significant player in this space now.
I will be interested to see how the chips fall for Evernote. They had a great run.