If you have ever wanted to know which are the most popular email clients that people worldwide are using to read /open their emails, take a look at this graph.
Microsoft Outlook (including Outlook Express) is the most popular desktop email software followed by web-based email services from Yahoo Mail and Windows Live Hotmail.
These stats are based on the email client usage of more than 300 million people that was done by Campaign Monitor for some six months.
The company embeds a tracking image into their email messages and uses the referral information to determine the email client that was used to open that particular email.
That means if a person is reading his emails in offline mode or has turned off automatic image downloads (like in Gmail) or is using an email client that cannot display images (like older BlackBerry phones), his email client will go undetected.
If you are reading this story on a mobile phone with images turned off, here’s a text version of the same graph:
| Email client | Popularity |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Outlook | 39.63% |
| Yahoo! Mail | 15.65% |
| Hotmail | 15.35% |
| Apple Mail | 8.25% |
| iPhone / iPod Touch | 5.78% |
| Gmail | 5.51% |
| AOL Mail | 2.76% |
| Lotus Notes 6 | 1.72% |
| Thunderbird 2 | 1.12% |
| Others | 4.23% |
It is also important to note that the above graph represents popularity of email clients and not email services. For instance, one could be using POP or IMAP to read his Gmail messages inside Outlook so that will increase the share of Outlook and not that of Gmail.
There’s little doubt that Yahoo! Mail is the more popular email service out there but another reason why its ranking so high in the list of email clients is because the free version of Yahoo Mail doesn’t offer POP functionality and therefore most people are using web browsers to check emails.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/email/most-popular-email-clients/9340/
Tags: data, feature, microsoft outlook, Email
Reader Comments
I’m kinda surprised Apple has such a significant share.
I use Windows Live Mail to read my e-mails from my Windows Live Hotmail addresses. I like WLMail because it’s pretty simple and easy to use.
Written by Quikboy on 08.06.09
This graph doesn’t count Chinese users. Top two biggest email services in China 163.com & 126.com
Written by Daniel Wang on 08.06.09
The Bat! FTW
Written by Abhisek on 08.06.09
i guess gmails share is quiet higher than reported, because by default image is turned off in gmail accounts,,
Written by maya on 08.06.09
Apple Mail has a bigger share than Gmail? That can’t be right!
I think the methodology of this study is a little to biased to give relevant results.
Have they mentioned their error margins? link
Written by gxg on 08.07.09
on the website of the study, they state that ~ 11-12% of the clients were Undetectable. that could change the hierarchy considerably.
Written by gxg on 08.07.09
So if image download is turned off the reader type will not be detected – so is there a figure for Unknown? I see a response above of 11%.
So Thunderbird default is no images so likely TB has some 10% or so usage.
Whole thing really shows Outlook is a security and privacy risk
Written by Ron on 08.09.09
most of the people i know use gmail for personal purpose and outlook for official purpose …
i dont need a survey to know that
Written by dhruva on 08.11.09