Netease’s Cloud Notes App Hits 2 Million Users, Chasing After Evernote

With smartphone usage in China on the rise, Netease (NASDAQ:NTES) has today announced that its Evernote-style cloud notes app, Youdao YunBiJi, has reached just over two million users. The service launched in June 2011.

With apps for Windows, iPhone, iPad (pictured above), and Android – as well as a mobile website interface – the company says that its mobile users are spread pretty much 50-50 across iOS and Android. Youdao YunBiJi supports text notes, images, text-recognition from images, and Chinese handwriting input.

In contrast to Youdao Yunbiji, US-based Evernote says it has an impressive eight million active monthly users with way more registered users on board, and a full 750,000 who’re paying for premium accounts. Netease’s Youdao Yunbiji doesn’t have such paid services and is instead offered for free as part of its broader ecosystem of email, search, news, gaming, and video. But its two million milestone is impressive for such a new app in a very fragmented marketplace.

Netease’s notes app has essentially the same name as that of a startup’s effort, YunBiJi, which we looked at last October and declared it to be the best-looking Chinese notes app out there. The smaller company’s app retains some plus points – such as its looks, and a recently-released desktop version for Mac – but it’s probably going to be steamrollered in terms of SEO and user numbers by the Chinese web giant.

Netease is best known for its social gaming and email services (the latter of which will soon be integrated into Mac OS X), but it is increasingly pushing into mobile apps these days, such as with YunBiJi as well as its own Flipboard clone news-reading service.

[Source: Donews – article in Chinese]