Evernote Android SDK gets support for Business and China services, bringing parity with iOS

Evernote quietly announced two significant new features to its Android SDK after it added support for its Business service and separate Chinese Yinxiang Biji platform.

The iOS SDK has included these features since it got a “major update” last December, and Android devs can now enjoy the same benefits.

The new additions are important because they give developers access to two new and fast-growing Evernote user segments: those in China that use the dedicated local service, and enterprise customers that use the $10-per-user-per-month priced Business service. Now Android apps that connect to Evernote can be developed to give these users a more customized and thorough experience.

Yinxiang Biji launched in May 2012  and, while Evernote has not provided specific user numbers so far, it has voiced its happiness with growth, telling TNW that usage in China is exceeding expectation. Initial user acquisition was “off the chart”, according to APAC GM Troy Malone, who revealed that, during its first week of life, the Chinese service added more new sign-ups than any other country, although growth was expected to slow over time.

Evernote Business is another important service. It launched in an initial seven markets in December, before hitting a further 26 countries last month. At the time of the latest launch, Evernote said that more than 2,000 businesses had signed up.

The company expects that a further 50 additional countries will have access to Evernote Business during the first half of this year, with markets in EMEA, Latin America, and Asia Pacific set to be added “in the coming months”.

Here’s the full list of updates to the Evernote Android SDK, which is now at version 1.1.

• Asynchronous wrappers around NoteStore.Client and UserStore.Client
• Helper objects to work with Business Notebooks and Linked Notebooks
• Added a ClientFactory to assist creating the various Client objects
• Automatic Evernote China service selection during login
• Simplified the singleton initialization process
• Added sample code that includes note creation, resource creation, notebook selection as well as working with multiple activities
• Bug fixes

Evernote is one of a number of tech companies to have suffered security issues of late. The US firm was forced to reset all of its near-50 million users’ passwords after a security breach two weeks ago, though it gained praise for its honest communication and thorough approach.