At some point in high school, I decided that I would structure my life to maximize my chances of being able to utter these three phrases in serious conversation: “Fire the explosive bolts,” “Set the controls for the heart of the sun” and “I’ll be working from the Tokyo office this week.” One down, two to go.
Today, we officially launched Evernote Japan [press release]! It turns out that we’re pretty big over there. For those wondering, the image above is how you write Evernote in Japanese.
Japan is a country of many “firsts” for Evernote:
First in international users
Japan is our biggest international market, second only to the US. Over 18% of our active users come from Japan. The next biggest country, Spain, accounts for 4%. In fact, the number of Evernote users in Japan is larger than the number of users in the next 10 biggest countries combined.
First in published books
Japan is in first place in the number of Evernote books. There are already five dedicated books about Evernote published in Japan. I popped into a Tokyo bookstore yesterday to buy a map and saw an Evernote book on the prestigious “table top” display. I got really excited and quickly snapped this picture with my iPhone. It wasn’t till I got back to my hotel that I realized that there were actually three different Evernote books in the photo.
First in the number of partners
Japan is also in first place for Evernote partners. We have more partners in Japan than in any other country and more than half of our API partners —folks building great new hardware and software products that tie into Evernote—are currently in Japan. Many of these partners are big companies serving the Japanese market, such as NEC Biglobe (the first ISP to offer Evernote to all subscribers) and SourceNext (the biggest software retailer in Japan), but many others are making Evernote products that will be available worldwide. You’ll hear a lot more about these soon.
Meetup!
And talk about parties! Here’s a photo from our Tokyo Evernote Meetup.
So a giant domo arigato gozaimashita to all our Japanese users and partners for embracing Evernote and making us a part of your culture! You’re helping make Evernote a better product for everyone. We are honored to have your confidence and support.
It’s pretty cool to have achieved one third of my life’s goals. Think it’s too late to get a job at NASA?
