Evernote's impression market landed in China: transition from selling hardware to platform

Original title: Evernote Play hardware to the platform transformation

Cloud Notebook service provider Evernote (impression notes) recently announced that its online platform Evernote harsh (impression Market) officially entered the Chinese market. Evernote Harsh sells hardware products related to Evernote, such as wireless scanners, Bluetooth touch pens, etc. This means that Evernote is no longer a mere software developer, and has begun to transform itself into a "platform-oriented" enterprise.

Last September, Evernote launched Evernote Harsh and pioneered the market in North America and Japan. Most of the sales in the "Impression market" are life-creative products, said the company's CEO Fille Liebing Phil Libin, and the company wants to develop an unusual "new hardware type" to avoid stiff competition in the mobile and tablet markets.

For example, the impression notes and 3M jointly launched a colorful post-it. The user can use the notes of the impression note to take photos, then the software will automatically identify the sticker color, extract handwritten notes to strengthen, and eventually form a digital sticker in the note. In addition, users can customize the color of the sticker to specify the notebook, and add labels and reminders--all save and tidy work is done automatically at the moment of shooting.

These intelligent products can be divided into digital hardware and life hardware two categories, a total of 6 categories, nearly 30 single products. Currently entering the Chinese market includes Jot script Bluetooth stylus, which can be written on the ipad, and ScanSnap wireless scanners that scan and archive paper files, as well as storage cups, backpacks, wallets, notebooks, etc.

But in terms of the commodity itself, their prices are thousands of dollars, and the United States offline retail sales price is quite, it appears very "do not meet the atmosphere." A handmade purse in China, the price of 898 yuan, a single shoulder bag price of 1798 yuan, even the price of paper business notebook, also up to 288 yuan.

Even so, these hardware products have received no small repercussions overseas. In the first two quarters of this year, the "impression market" sales of more than 7 million U.S. dollars, and more than half of the hardware revenue from the free version of the impression note users. That figure goes well beyond Liebing's expectations, and he can't wait to bring hardware products to China.

In fact, Liebing attaches particular importance to emerging markets such as China, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Last May, the total number of impressions taken in China was 4 million, and now that number has exceeded 11 million. For the company, China has become the second largest market after the United States. In the future, China will be the biggest and most important market for impression notes, whether from the number of users or the growth rate, Liebing said.

"We are now in China on the hardware products, because we can not do faster." "Because we have to set up warehousing, logistics and customer service locally in China," he said. "And before, Japan and other place impression market goods are direct mail from the United States."

In Liebing's view, the sale of physical products is a breakthrough in the traditional mode, but also for the company's core business model and user development of inheritance and continuity. Before, the impression notes tried to sell ads on the basis of free software, but soon abandoned the strategy. Liebing is also unwilling to do data mining on the basis of existing data, because it involves user privacy, once used to make money, will eventually lose the user's trust. After repeated consideration, the impression of note-taking decision or from the real product to make money, to develop a lifestyle as the core product ecology.

At the moment, there are three types of income from the impression notes, one is the paid income of the Advanced edition account, the other is the paid income of the enterprise version, and the third is the sales of the hardware products. In the company's ideal state, these three revenue can eventually be accounted for One-third.

"By selling products to make money, this is the business model for thousands of years." All the other models have been around for almost 20 years. The more dazzling the business model is, the more traps there are. "We want to return to the pattern of 20 years ago and win users in the most direct and honest way," Liebing said. ”

Liebing refers to the user, by the company defined as "knowledge-based workers", "these people who work with the brain, the pursuit of pleasure, efficient and convenient way of working." "And the impression notes to do is to meet the needs of these users, from software to hardware, to content." Software, the world has 100 million users to download the impression notes, most of them through word-of-mouth after the active download. On the hardware side, the company tries to improve people's working life efficiency by combining physical products with digital products. "Impression Market" in the product also basically follow the idea: for example, a storage cup can not only display debris, but also to support mobile phones; a shoulder bag not only to design fashion, but also to make all items at a glance.

It is worth mentioning that, "impression market" in all the products are born in cooperation, the company adopted the strategy is to first with the external manufacturers joint design, and then through the OEM factory production. "For example, scanners are designed in Japan, Chinese production, wallets are designed and manufactured in Japan." "It is reported that the next two or three years, the company also has the possibility of independent production of hardware."

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)