My take? Evernote failed because it's a Feature, Not a Company ("FNAC") [1]. There are lots of examples of this. Just because something is a good idea doesn't make it a viable standalone business.
Evernote was early in this space but it already competed with (for eample) sending yourself emails. Nowadays there are all sorts of alternatives like Apple has a note-taking app on their devices, which is just free (it might use storage but that's a minor issue). Likewise, you can use Google Apps.
Evernote's attempts to make it a business by introducing the friction of a subscription to get syncing beyond 2 devices (and other variants I'm forgetting I'm sure) just exposed this FNAC problem.
Now could this have been leveraged to build a sustainable business of which note syncing was a part? Maybe. But that's not exactly easy either.
Evernote was early in this space but it already competed with (for eample) sending yourself emails. Nowadays there are all sorts of alternatives like Apple has a note-taking app on their devices, which is just free (it might use storage but that's a minor issue). Likewise, you can use Google Apps.
Evernote's attempts to make it a business by introducing the friction of a subscription to get syncing beyond 2 devices (and other variants I'm forgetting I'm sure) just exposed this FNAC problem.
Now could this have been leveraged to build a sustainable business of which note syncing was a part? Maybe. But that's not exactly easy either.
[1]: https://bothsidesofthetable.com/explaining-fnac-feature-not-...