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Re:Show HN: Kanmail – An email client that functions like a ... by slightwinder on Monday April 27, 2020 @11:43AM (#22996912)
That is the wrong assumption. They don't need to compete with anyone. As a commercial software they only need to make enough money to survive for their own good. As a non-commercial software they don't even need money, just enough attention to stay useable. And in both those camps there are still many members alive.
Re:Show HN: Kanmail – An email client that functions like a ... by toyg on Tuesday April 28, 2020 @08:02AM (#23006167)
Non-commercial doesn't really matter to the thread.

Commercially, you see the occasional upstart, but inevitably they die after a few years. I used Airmail for a while but they just stagnated (they barely kept up with Gmail and struggled with Exchange) so I had to drop them.

The market for commercial desktop email clients is super-small: the intersection of the already-niche subgroups of people who will pay for email clients, people who will pay for desktop software, and people who will pay for already-commoditized software. The effort is simply not worth the small rewards, particularly compared to the impact one could have by building on existing commodity clients.