Infographic: iPhone Beats Outlook As Top Email Client, As Mobile Overtakes Desktop

What’s the most popular email client out there? The iPhone, which stats says now is used by more people than Outlook. That goes along with a trend of more email now being opened on mobile devices than in desktop clients, though the use of webmail could be happening in both places.

The stats are from Litmus, an email testing and analytics company that examined one billion “opens” of emails sent by its customers in June, then compiled the findings into this infographic:

You can get the infographic yourself here: Email Client Market Share: New Stats.

As you can see, more email is now opened on mobile devices (36%, as of April 2012) than in desktop clients (33%). But it’s not clear whether “webmail” opens might boost either mobile or desktop figures. Webmail opens were 31%, and those opens could happen on either mobile or desktop platforms.

Top Email Clients

As for email clients, the iPhone is seen as leading the pack:

1. iPhone: 20%
2. Outlook: 18%
3. Yahoo: 13%
4. Apple Mail: 9%
5. Hotmail: 8%
6. Apple iPad: 8%
7. Android: 7%
8. Gmail: 5%
9. Web Version: 5%
10. Windows Live Mail: 3%

Litmus also has a separate site with fresh stats for September 2012 that shows Apple with a marked gain for Apple iPad and Apple Mail, as well as Hotmail. The stats:

1. iPhone: 21%
2. Outlook: 18%
3. Apple iPad: 10%
4. Apple Mail: 9%
5. Hotmail: 9%
6. Yahoo: 8%
7. Android: 7%
8. Gmail: 4%
9. Windows Live Mail: 3%
10. Yahoo Mail Classic: 2%

Gmail’s Low Ranking

What’s most surprising in the stats is perhaps the low ranking for Gmail, which by some counts has more users than Hotmail.

VentureBeat looked at some of the self-reported figures earlier this year, as well as those from comScore, which found unique visitors to be like this for May 2012:

• Hotmail: 325 million
• Yahoo: 298 million
• Gmail: 289 million

The Email Marketing Reports blog also has an interesting compilation of comparative stats here.

Gmail might be so low in the Litmus stats because it is accessed through other clients, such as the iPhone’s email client or Outlook. comScore figures also only count desktop activity, not smartphone activity. In addition, Litmus only counts email opens in clients that don’t automatically block image loading.

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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