Wizard Work's 'SomNote' was released recently on 'Chatting Plus' that was launched by Kakao Japan last month. It currently stands at 6th place on Google Play rankings- ahead of Naver's Naver Memo (ranked 10th) and Evernote (ranked 21st) in Korea. After partnering up with KakaoTalk, SomNote downloads increased by 5 times with Androids - and with iPhones, 27 times.
Chatting Plus enables external services to be used within the KakaoTalk chat rooms. Japan was the first country to launch this service - Korea will be the next country to test this out in the Q1. This has been getting a lot of user attention due to the fact that with simple commands you can use web services and applications from external sources without having to exit from the KakaoTalk chat rooms.
So what is 'SomNote'? SomNote is a note app with integrated cloud services. Unlike other note apps, synchronization is possible. The content on SomNote is synchronized with the web, and the user can edit or check the contents on the SomCloud website.
This means that even if you lose your phone, your notes will be safe! Users can save up to 100,000 words per note, and it is possible to attach photos, .pdf files, powerpoint, and other documents. There is also a 'Time Machine' feature that enables users to 'bring back' memos, and a 'Cloud Bin' that brings back data from the web if the user (accidentally) deleted content on their mobile devices.
SomNote will enable the limitations of KakaoTalk with regards to long messages. If users are using the KakaoTalk chat rooms as a form of media (for group studies or meetings), sending long messages will no longer be a problem with the help of SomNote that is synchronized with KakaoTalk's Chatting Plus.
On a phone call with Wizard Work's CEO, Charles Pyo, beSUCCESS found out that Pyo plans to 'cover the whole Asian region'. This seems like a feasible goal as SomNote had gone through 12 updates last year to improve the quality of the service. Also, in Japan, there are no cloud note services and Evernote is the only service in there. Also, Japan is known for having and preferring a neat and 'cutesy' culture, so note utility apps such as 'SomNote' is almost guaranteed success.
SomNote has seen a steady growth of Japanese users. As explained in a previous article, Japan is likely to catch up to Korea in terms of smartphone penetration with the total market size to reach similar levels to Korea within the next few years. (The Korean market is more mature, with 65% smartphone penetration already.) The Japanese potential market is effectively twice the size of that in Korea and will continue to grow substantially, as smartphones continue to proliferate. It will be interesting to see how SomNote plays out in Japan and other Asian regions this year.
