Hands on: FiftyThree's Paper 3.0 adds iPhone compatibility, gains note-taking features with support for text, images, lists, and more
Hands on: Paper by FiftyThree comes to your pocket with iPhone support — FiftyThree tweaked Paper's interface a bit in this version to integrate …
Context & Ripple Effects
FiftyThree spent 2015 repositioning Paper from a paid iPad sketchbook into something broader: it made the app completely free on the strength of 13M downloads, betting instead on Pencil stylus sales, then shipped Think Kit to court enterprise and education users with exportable diagrams. Paper 3.0 completes that pivot toward general-purpose capture — the app now runs on iPhone and handles text, images, lists, and other note-taking formats alongside drawing.
First-order effects
- Existing Paper users gain pocket-sized capture: sketches, notes, photos, and lists can be started or added on iPhone rather than only at the iPad, widening FiftyThree's addressable base beyond artists who own a tablet.
- The stylus-first monetization bet now has a bigger funnel — more free installs across two device classes means more potential Pencil buyers.
Second-order effects
- Paper is now a direct note-taking competitor to OneNote, which within weeks moved to neutralize the threat by adding support for FiftyThree's own Pencil stylus on iPad — adopting the rival's hardware rather than conceding the notes market to it.
- The Pixelmator iPhone port showed how much functionality survives the shrink to phone-sized screens; Paper's interface tweaks are the same trade-off, and reviewers will judge whether text-and-list editing avoids the cramped feel that frustrated Pixelmator users.
Third-order effects
- Stylus and input accessories are becoming platform-agnostic commodities — when Microsoft's OneNote supports a competitor's Pencil, hardware value migrates away from any single app ecosystem, pressuring accessory-dependent business models like FiftyThree's.
- If creative apps keep expanding from single-device canvases into multi-device capture suites, they converge head-on with productivity incumbents — a collision Apple's own 3D Touch and Apple Pencil push in Office and iWork only accelerates.
The trend: Creative iPad apps are evolving into cross-device capture platforms, dragging boutique developers into direct competition with Microsoft-scale note-taking incumbents.