Apparently information capturing and management startup Evernote is seeing quite some early success in Japan only three months after the release of its Japanese-language version.
Already, Japan is its second largest market after the United States, Evernote says, representing nearly 15 percent of the service’s daily traffic. Furthermore, over 50,000 books about Evernote in Japanese have already gone over the counter.
This popularity is in part due to a number of partnerships with leading Japanese tech companies like Sony, Canon, Fujitsu and more, the company says. And Evernote is keen on capitalizing on the current momentum it is enjoying in Japan.
Much like Twitter did early on, Evernote is going to focus a considerable amount of resources on growing its business in Japan. The company is today announcing that it has formed a wholly-owned Japanese subsidiary, Evernote Japan, and opening an office in Tokyo. In addition, Evernote is also announcing that its image recognition technology now supports Japanese characters.
The objective of the new company is to better serve Evernote’s rapidly growing user-base and its local technology and developer partners in Japan. The Tokyo office will have a full-time local staff focused on support, marketing, community engagement, and product development, we’re told.
The subsidiary will be headed by Takeshi Nakajima, vice president of Japanese Operations. Prior to joining Evernote, Nakajima had a management role within the VAIO Business Group at Sony.
Evernote Japan has also appointed Hitoshi Hokamura, a veteran of the Japanese IT industry, Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former marketing director of Apple Japan, as chairman of the Japan subsidiary.
Coinciding with the launch of the new company, Evernote is also announcing that its image recognition technology now supports Japanese characters. As from today, new images added to Evernote containing printed Japanese characters will be indexed and made searchable for those with Japanese set as their recognition language. Evernote Premium subscribers can have all of their old notes re-indexed.
Evernote is backed by over $25 million in venture capital. Recently, Evernote CEO Phil Libin gave a presentation discussing some of the startup’s key revenue numbers and strategy – you can watch the video of his talk below.
