Evernote is going after KakaoTalk’s 90 million registered users by inking a partnership deal with the South Korean messaging giant that would bring Evernote integration to KakaoTalk’s mobile app.
Despite boasting nearly 4 million users here in the United States, chances are you’ve never heard of KakaoTalk. The messaging app is mostly used by Korean Americans (such as myself), to communicate with friends and family both here and abroad. Yet back in South Korea, KakaoTalk has a dominant presence. The messaging app is installed on 95 percent of the smartphones in use and has a smaller but steadily growing user base of 15 million in Japan. Mind you, in Japan KakaoTalk is still overshadowed by Line, which reached 150 million users registered users worldwide today.
Interestingly enough, the partnership is the first of its kind that Evernote has inked with any messaging app, and reveals the company’s aspirations to expand its presence across the Pacific. Out of Evernote’s global 50-million-strong user base, only 15 million of those users come from the Asia-Pacific, which includes South Korea, China, Japan and Australia. Evernote is clearly hoping to leverage KakaoTalk’s ubiquity among the South Korean population to expand its user base there.
KakaoTalk is also looking to expand its user base worldwide, and it’s hoping that Evernote’s popularity in the United States will put them in the limelight. Like I said before, KakaoTalk is a virtual unknown here in America if you’re not Korean, and the South Korean company would very much like to change that.
It’s still unclear what form Evernote will make its presence known in KakaoTalk’s app, but it’s safe to assume that the mobile app across all three platforms (iOS, Android, and Windows Phone) will come to support the Evernote integration.
KakaoTalk is a free download at the iOS App Store and the Google Play Store.