“Many users only make use of a portion of our features, and they would like that to be a standalone app,” he says. Inoue says that there have been a lot of demands for an ‘Evernote Lite’, a standalone app that is simple and specific. Google seems to be on this path now, first with chat apps Allo and Duo, and now with the newly announced YouTube Go, all of which seem to be designed from the ground up to provide simple, streamlined interfaces designed with a mobile-first, mindset. Trimming down a well-established app with a large user base – Inoue points out that Evernote has 200 million users worldwide and approximately 8-to-9 million in India – can be difficult, and the other alternative would be to build a new app, from the ground up. “It’s a complex problem, but we are constantly working to slim down and be more intuitive for users.”

“Evernote has a lot of features, and that can overwhelm some people, for whom using Evernote doesn’t become a habit,” he admits. Ken Inoue, GM APAC and Japan at Evernote spoke to Gadgets 360 over the phone about how the company has been refining its product, what challenges it sees in the immediate future, and how it is working to overcome them. That’s a problem that Evernote has to answer right now.

But this brings up an interesting problem – can a product that has already matured and evolved in markets such as the US and Japan, then grow quickly in developing markets where it may be seen as daunting and too complex, since it’s no longer the simple version that became popular?

That’s why companies are now turning their eyes to markets such as India and China to fuel the next stage of growth.

As the smartphone markets get saturated, it’s getting harder for app companies to onboard new users. For Evernote - and, indeed, many other apps around the world - growth in the US and Japan is slowing.

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