Email client trends for 2009

March 31, 2010

It's a little belated, but we've just completed analyzing email client usage across more than half a billion email opens throughout 2009. You can view the complete report here, but I recommend reading on as I expand on some of the more interesting findings. If you didn't already know, we keep track of exactly which email clients your subscribers are using and present that in a nice report for each campaign you send. Knowing which email clients your subscribers might be using can be extremely useful when coding your emails. If you don't have to worry how your email will look in Lotus Notes 6, you just saved yourself a few hours of frustration.

There is however one limitation on how we can measure which email clients a subscriber is using. Basically, we need your subscriber to have images enabled, or to click a link in your campaign. If they open your email with images disabled, there's just no way we can access that data. This, of course, means that those email clients that disable images by default (like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and Outlook) will appear to be less popular than those that don't disable (like Apple Mail and the iPhone). The report still gives you a very good indication, but it's not perfectly accurate.

What is accurate however, are the trends that we measure in usage over time.

It's all about the trends

While image blocking can create minor distortions in exactly which email client is the most popular, it's irrelevant when we measure the change in usage of that particular email client over time. Unless an email client switches their default on image blocking (none did), it's an extremely accurate way of seeing which clients are being used more, and which are falling out of fashion. Here are the big changes we uncovered in our 2009 number crunching:

Email client	Change in usage
iPhone	128.6%
Apple Mail	21.37%
Hotmail	6.7%
Gmail	6%
Thunderbird	3.5%
Outlook 2000 to 2007	9%
Yahoo! Mail	9.8%
MobileMe	11.8%
AOL Webmail	38%

iPhone usage grows almost 130%

While some of our previous claims about the growth of iPhone email client market share were often met with criticism, one thing is certainly clear - iPhone is growing. Fast. Not only did usage more than double in 2009, but the low friction upgrade system built into iTunes has ensured customers upgrade quickly.

iPhone OS 3.0 was the fast growing email client of the year with market share growing to more than 7%. Since its release in June 2009 it now comprises more than 80% of all iPhone usage. At the same time, iPhone 2.0 was the fastest shrinking client and lost more than 3% total market share last year.

Apple Mail up 21%

In reflection of the continued growth in sales of Apple hardware in 2009, Apple Mail usage across version 2, 3 and 4 grew by a total 21% throughout the year. Apple Mail 4 was released with OS X Snow Leopard at the end of August 2009 and was the second fastest growing email client of the year. Latest figures indicate version 4 will soon surpass the usage of version 3. It's been a dominant year for Apple.

Outlook 2007 growing, but not fast enough

Impressively, use of Outlook 2007 grew by 50% over the course of 2009. However, the total usage of Outlook across all versions (from 1998 through to 2007 inclusive) actually dropped by 9%. While a large number of Outlook users are upgrading to the latest version, it seems a significant percentage are also switching to other email clients.

Yahoo! Mail slips while Hotmail and Gmail gain

On the web-based email client front, Yahoo! Mail is the only major client to see a reduction in market share over 2009, dropping almost 10% last year. Hotmail, on the other hand, grew by 6.7% and Gmail was right behind with total growth of 6%. AOL Web Mail usage dropped a significant 38% and Mobile Me use dropped almost 12% too.

Some closing thoughts

While these observations are interesting from a big picture perspective, you really should look at your own results when making decisions about which email clients to build and test for. One thing's for sure, mobile email is the fastest growing area of the market today and shows no signs of slowing down. We've been doing more research lately on getting the best results for these clients, and we'll be publishing a few of the more interesting discoveries soon.

How do these industry-wide results stack up against the usage your seeing for your own subscriber lists?

Posted in: Tips & Resources

13 Comments

Oskar Smith
March 31, 2010 6:23pm

Thanks for posting this David - stats duly bookmarked. It’ll be interesting to see if the launch of the “Google Phone” this year will be reflected in the next set of stats; I’ve not heard much on what the uptake is on the Nexus One yet.

Thanks again.
Jay Chambers
March 31, 2010 8:45pm

Very Interesting, but has got me worrying that i don’t pay enough attention to how my mail looks on the iPhone.

Are there any apps (similar to litmus) that render emails on mobile email clients?
David Greiner
March 31, 2010 8:54pm

Jay, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ll be offering more comprehensive mobile testing soon, including iPhone support. As soon as the Litmus team have it ready to roll, we’ll be integrating it and announcing it here.
David Greiner
March 31, 2010 8:55pm

Oskar, to date we haven’t seen a great deal of activity from Android, but we’ll be looking at including stats on this and other mobile clients like the Palm Pre into our email client reports soon.
indie_preneur
April 1, 2010 12:13am

This is great news. Apple products always do a great job of rendering properly-coded HTML. Any updates about Lotus Notes? Hopefully 6 and 7 are dying out…
Pablo Vera
April 1, 2010 3:12am

I am curious as well, to see if there is any data around Lotus Notes. Specially around email campaigns targeting large enterprise audiences, what percentage of companies are using Lotus Notes vs. Outlook etc.
mailonizer
April 1, 2010 4:00am

thanks for that trend info again. it is always a pleasure to watch your email client data.
We are wondering how people organize their email backup with iPhone.
Adam Jones
April 1, 2010 5:24am

Why do you think MobileMe usage dropped? The yearly fee or are more Apple folks enjoying Gmail?
farnhizzle
April 1, 2010 1:07pm

Awesome stats! thanks for the fine research and publishing, you guys rock.

here’s a nice lil article on iphone and mobile rise to power. iPhone and Mobile data
Will Robertson
April 2, 2010 12:01am

Did BlackBerry e-mail use increase or decrease?
J
April 3, 2010 1:55pm

Erm. Stats related to AOL account for AOL 9.1, but don’t include AOL 9.5 (which was the main client released in 2/2009) or AOL Desktop (note that 9.1 is not the same as Desktop). There are the 2 main clients to which users on 9.1 were delivered updates… seems very incomplete and misrepresentative to not account for those when deriving stats from these metrics—even when compared to themselves.
Ros Hodgekiss
April 6, 2010 9:50am

HI Indie_preneur & Pablo Vera, we have stats for Lotus Notes 6 which show that it’s on the cool. At the beginning of 2009, it had 1.8% share of the overall email client market, which then dropped to 1.3% by year’s end. That’s a 27% drop in the space of a year. Of course, Lotus Notes is still popular amongst enterprise users, thus all the design headaches when dealing with clients from med-to-large companies.

Adam Jones - I suspect a bit of both. Plus there are other convenient ways to consume your email now (eg. iPhone).

Will Robertson - We’ll look into Blackberry usage, it certainly would be a good thing to know. As yet we don’t have stats on this.

J - No worries, we’ll certainly keep AOL 9.5 in mind for our next report. Note that AOL Mail and Desktop 9.1 account for around 1% of email client use respectively… And like Lotus Notes, have experienced a downward trend in the last 12 months.

Keep the questions coming - we’re always happy to get mixed up in the numbers!
J
April 11, 2010 11:42pm

Good to hear Ros, but I think you missed my point for the 2009 - It makes sense that AOL 9.1 (again, not called Desktop, that’s 10.1) would see a downtrend since most users moved from 9.1 to 9.5 starting in February of 2009. I’m sure someone at AOL could attest that use of that software itself was downtrended in 2009 in favor of the upgrades to the updated 9.5 software.

I’m just saying there’s a much larger user base not accounted for WRT AOL in 2009. Hopefully future releases (as they’ve had a 9.6 in beta this year) will also remain accounted for once released to the general public as well.

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