I think the popularity of Gmail is overestimated by a lot of techies. Campaign Monitor posted user stats for over 300 million people last summer: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/post/2839/email-client-p...

Gmail came in at only 5.5%.

That's clients, not providers. I use Gmail and have for years, but I don't have an @gmail.com address that I use or access my mail from the web interface. My mail client is typically Mail.app or the Mail iPhone app.

They are tracking these based on loaded images, which means Gmail users by default aren't counted. Some versions of Outlook (at least 2000) autoload images. Lots of mobile devices don't load images, which makes BlackBerry users undercounted.

Not to mention sample bias--I also don't sign up for email newsletters.

tl;dr those stats are a hot steaming pile

You probably don't use a lot of MS products.

Outlook 2000 is 4 (maybe 5) versions old. At least 2010, 2007 and 2003 don't load images by default, I wouldn't be surprised if Outlook XP didn't either.

More to the point: no large organization is using Outlook 2000 anymore. It's unsupported and you can get 2010, 2007, 2003 or even XP on your current license agreement.

... And yet "Outlook 2000, 2003, Express" make up 32% of all email clients found in their study. My point isn't that these are in high use, but that they are vastly over counted (and even then meaningless to try and find providers as there are plenty of people using Gmail inside of Outlook).

Aye, lumping in 2003 (which is current -1, ie, still supported by MS and most corporate customers) with 2000 and Express (which aren't supported) and weirdly omitting XP is odd.

I think the data is skewed; most email marketing is used for B2B, rather than B2C.

And many people have more than one email address and in a corporate environment, it shouldn't be surprising Gmail falls below 10%.

Not really. (a) Gmail has a lot of users, even if it doesn't have more yet, and (b) I bet Gmail's growth is faster.

Yes, but the company is saying that GMail replaced Outlook. Clearly it has not - I'm sure most new GMail users are not ex-Outlook PIM users. This is because GMail is in a different product category

- what percentage of GMail users regularly schedule more than one event a week?

- what percentage of Gmail users use reminders?

- How much of their day is spent with GMail open?

- How often do they search Google contacts for phone numbers and other data?

I don't think they'll be bumming if they get to be as big as Gmail.

There have definitely been more people who've chosen to use GMail and GCal than have chosen to use Outlook. Most Outlook users have it forced on them by their employers. (They don't necessarily object, but they weren't given a choice.)

If you include Outlook Express, then you have to consider that it had the same tying advantages that IE had over other browsers. Even so, it's been months since I ran across someone who uses Outlook or Outlook Express for personal email. Thunderbird and Apple Mail are somewhat more common among the people I deal with, but the majority of people I deal with use some kind of web mail for their personal email, with GMail completely dominating among those who are at least slightly technical and among kids.

You don't need to be downvoted, but my experience so far completely contradicts what you're saying (with around 50 active clients at the moment, including some businesses, and currently accruing one new client a week for the last 6 weeks).

Outlook is pretty much the de facto mail client amongst my clients, even those that aren't in business environments. My largest business client is email-program-agnostic, and still the vast majority of users are asking for Outlook.

Among webmail users, most usage is either Comcast's site, Yahoo's (a result of the SBC partnership), or their internet service provider's.

Actually, I think this might help put it in perspective: more of my clients have email addresses at their own domain versus having Gmail accounts.

Only commenting on the last line, that doesn't really put it in perspective at all.

A user could, if he so chose, have email addresses at their own domain, on Gmail, AND use Outlook to access it. There's a VERY blurry line between the usage patterns of the average mail user.

That said, I agree with you in thinking the parent was underestimating Outlook's prevalence.

I bet they have more happy users.

I think they'd be about the same. But Outlook users certainly aren't rushing to replace a PIM with a badly integrated and badly UI-designed equivalent, web based or not.