FiftyThree releases Think Kit for Paper, a new toolset for enterprise and education, can now be exported to Keynote, PowerPoint, more
Today, we're proud to announce … Brent Dirks / App Advice : Paper by FiftyThree updated with Think Kit tools and a redesigned sharing functionality Jackie Dove / The Next Web : FiftyThree debuts Think Kit toolset for its Paper iPad app iClarified : Paper by FiftyThree Gets Updated with Think Kit, Adding Three New Tools Paul Sawers / VentureBeat : FiftyThree's Paper app now helps you sketch graphs by hand with new auto-correction and diagram tools Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac : FiftyThree's free drawing iPad app Paper gets business-like, now feeds into Keynote & PowerPoint
Context & Ripple Effects
FiftyThree spent early 2015 repositioning Paper from paid creative app to distribution play — after 13M downloads it made the app completely free and pinned revenue hopes on Pencil stylus sales. Think Kit is the next step of that pivot: instead of courting illustrators, the company is arming business and education users with diagram and graph-sketching tools, then handing them export pipes into Keynote, PowerPoint, and other presentation software.
First-order effects
- Paper users in enterprise and education gain three new tools for hand-drawn diagrams and auto-corrected graphs, with one-tap export into Keynote and PowerPoint — putting FiftyThree's output directly into decks built on the suite that holds roughly 95% presentation market share.
- The move targets the exact segment where iPad momentum has stalled: US education iPad sales fell 6.9% to 2.7M units in 2014, so FiftyThree is positioning Paper as a reason to use iPads in classrooms and meeting rooms.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft moves to close the gap from its side — OneNote added support for FiftyThree's own Pencil stylus and announced Ink Shape Recognition, absorbing the same shape-recognition capability Think Kit just shipped.
- Apple keeps tightening the native path: successive iWork updates on iOS and OS X make Keynote a more capable destination for sketch-to-deck workflows, reducing the need for a bridge app over time.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, hand-drawn input stops being a standalone app category and becomes a feature of office suites themselves — Apple's later iWork release with built-in Apple Pencil integration shows the platforms absorbing what FiftyThree is pioneering here.
- For FiftyThree the structural risk is clear: its monetization rests on hardware (Pencil) while its software value migrates into Keynote, PowerPoint, and OneNote — a squeeze between the very ecosystems it integrates with.
The trend: Stylus-driven creativity apps are being pulled into mainstream office-productivity ecosystems, with platform owners like Apple and Microsoft absorbing the capabilities of independent developers.