Evernote Ignores Mobile Market, develops for a handful of users

Evernote's release of a Palm Pre client really irks me, and I fail to understand their strategy of continual targeting of small market share mobile devices.
Look at the numbers for a second:

The Pre has been out almost a week. They sold 50k units on the opening weekend (and most stores were at that point sold out) and this is an unproven, though admittedly sexy platform.

In Q1 of 2009 alone, over 15 MILLION S60 powered smartphones were sold. (14.9 from Nokia, I'm guessing at least 100k from the other manufacturers developing on this platform.)

This one quarter equals the total number of iPhones sold at that point in time. So why does Evernote ignore this huge userbase? This lack of a usable mobile client is what keeps me from subscribing to Evernote, even though I use the service daily.

also, Android has one million units sold in the US and there is, as yet, no Android client, either.

Are the guys at Evernote so short-sighted that they can only focus on companies they can see? (Evernote and Palm are located in Mt. View, Apple is a few miles away in Cupertino, and Blackberry is in Irving, TX) Of course, this theory fails when we remember that Google is also in Mt. View. What they seem to be avoiding is the open platforms: Android is open source based on Linux, and S60 is an open platform that is moving to open source.

Another, more plausible theory, is that there are some guys at Palm that love Evernote and developed a client internally and then gave it to Evernote for polishing (or just did it themselves). I have no evidence this is true, but the client was released so quickly, and there are developers still asking for the Palm Pre SDK, that this is where I would put my money.

If you have thoughts on why this is, I would love to hear them.

N97 takes lessons from Maemo

Last night, after a long hike and massive grill-out, I was able to attend a "Drinks with Nokia" event and play with the upcoming N97 a little bit. As I was thinking about the interface and some features, I rememberd my now seldom-used N800 Internet tablet running Maemo. A great feature of the tablet was the desktop -or, "home screen"- could have some apps running on it with information or control. Examples include: weather forecast, music player (with now playing and controls), and contacts and their availability. The home screen could also be placed into edit mode in which you can select visible applications and drag them around to rearrange them. The N97 features this exact same design, and this is a great step forward for a mobile phone. The more information I can get with a quick glance, the better, and this design really packs an informational punch.

The other thing that struck me was the new "software updater" tool. As I understand it, this will be built-in to the N97, although I saw it running on a 5800. Like an Over the Air (OTA) update, launching this app tells you about available updates to the built-in components (like Maps, Flash and Share Online). I don't know about notifications, but this is how the Diablo release of Maemo handles updates to the software components. No need for a full image flash; instead, just update the components that have available updates. It's a great system and I am happy to see this on a phone.



As I understand it, the the N97 will come with Maps 2.0 installed by default; the device I played with did indeed still have Maps 2.0 running. But by launching this updater app, you can quickly and easily upgrade to Maps 3 without the need for a computer or navigating to a website. Slick!