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Email Client Market Share in July 2022

It’s time for us to look back at the most popular email clients from June to July 2022. Here are the monthly market trends based on open environment, mobile, webmail, desktop, and more—analyzed from over 1.3 billion opens in July 2022 with Litmus Email Analytics.

Before diving in, we’ve got an update to share: we’ll be reporting on email client market share in three-month increments moving forward. We’ll return in November to look at the shifts that took place from August through October 2022.

In the meantime, you can head to our email client market share site, updated on the first week of each month.

Two things to note:

  • As of fall 2021, the category “Apple” includes Apple iPhone (iOS Mail), Apple Mail (macOS Mail), Apple iPad (iPadOS Mail), and Apple Mail Privacy Protection (Apple privacy-impacted opens). Learn why in this blog post.
  • Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) hides device data so we aren’t able to differentiate between iOS, iPadOS, or macOS. Additionally, the new OSes don’t differentiate between MPP and non-MPP in the user agent data it passes.

Top 10 most popular email clients

Apple, Gmail, and Outlook are the top three most popular email clients for July 2022. As for the top 10:

Top 10 email clients bar chart

  1. Apple: 57.4%
  2. Gmail: 29.5%
  3. Outlook: 4.2%
  4. Yahoo Mail: 3.4%
  5. Google Android: 1.8%
  6. Outlook.com: 0.9%
  7. Samsung Mail: 0.3%
  8. Orange.fr: 0.1%
  9. Windows Live Mail: 0.08%
  10. Web.de: 0.05%

No major shifts took place: Samsung Mail, Orange.fr, Windows Live Mail, and Web.de all held the same share as they did last month. The bigger players stayed relatively the same, too. Apple decreased slightly, from 58.3% to 57.4%, Gmail increased a bit from 28.6% to 29.5%, and Outlook dropped from 4.4% to 4.2%.

Let’s take a closer look at each subcategory of Apple:

  1. Apple Mail Privacy Protection: 52.7%
  2. Apple Mail (macOS Mail): 2.3%
  3. Apple iPhone (iOS Mail): 2.1% 
  4. Apple iPad (iPadOS Mail): 0.3%

Though Apple Mail Privacy Protection is the most popular subcategory, it continues to wax and wane. Last month, it saw 1% increase, while this month it dropped down again, 53.2% to 52.7%. In second and third is Apple Mail (macOS Mail) and Apple iPhone (iOS Mail), respectively—both of which decreased by 0.2%.

Want more data and trends? Check out our email client market share site, which includes Apple’s MPP data, pre and post-MPP launch.

Most popular reading environments

Let’s take a closer look at opens by reading environment:

bar chart Opens by environment

  1. Apple Mail Privacy Protection: 52.2%
  2. Webmail: 36.0% ​
  3. Desktop: 6.5%
  4. Mobile: 4.4%
  5. Other: 0.9%

After Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which holds a majority of the share at 52.2%, webmail is the most popular reading environment at 36%—increasing 1% from the previous month.

When we were first able to track MPP in October 2021, mobile’s share was at 30.7%, while desktop was at 14%. Over time, both reading environments have dropped significantly; mobile now holds a 4.4% share, and desktop a 6.5% share. Since MPP impacts any email opened from the Apple Mail app on any device, the decrease in mobile and desktop may be attributed to MPP.

Most popular mobile opens

The most popular mobile email clients are still Apple iPhone (iOS Mail), Google Android, and Samsung Mail.

pie chart of Most popular mobile opens

  1. Apple iPhone (iOS Mail): 47.8%
  2. Google Android: 39.8%
  3. Samsung Mail: 6.1%

Although MPP has decreased mobile’s share of opens, Apple iPhone (iOS Mail) is still the most popular mobile email client with 47.8% of the share—though it’s on a continual decline. In January, it held 72.8% of mobile market share and last month, it accounted for over half of mobile market share (at 52.3%).

Most popular webmail opens

The top three most popular webmail clients are Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Outlook.com. 

pie chart on most popular webmail opens

  1. Gmail: 86.5%
  2. Yahoo Mail: 9.9%
  3. Outlook.com: 2.5%

Not much has changed from when we checked in last month. Even when we look back at January 2022, these three email clients—and their shares—haven’t experienced much movement.

Wondering why we categorize Gmail as webmail? Learn how Gmail opens are reported in Email Analytics.

Most popular desktop opens

What about desktop? The most popular clients are still Outlook, Apple Mail (macOS Mail), and Windows Live Mail—like last month.

Most popular desktop opens pie chart

  1. Outlook: 64.2%
  2. Apple Mail (macOS Mail): 34.4%
  3. Windows Live Mail: 1.2%

Apple Mail (macOS Mail) continues to see a decline, which could be attributed to MPP. Outlook continues to hold the top spot.

Light Mode vs. Dark Mode opens

The most popular reading environment of July 2022 is Light Mode by a landslide, with a share of 74.3%.Pie chart showing Light Mode vs dark mode

  1. Light Mode: 74.3%
  2. Dark Mode: 25.7%

Our Dark Mode data is based only on the Apple Mail app for iOS 13, macOS 13, iOS 14, macOS 14, iPadOS 14, iOS 15, iPadOS 15, and Apple Mail privacy-impacted devices.

What about your subscribers?

The trends discussed in this blog post provide an at-a-glance look at the most popular email clients. While understanding these trends can help you strategize, it’s important you take the time to understand what’s trending with your audience, in order to deliver a truly memorable and relevant subscriber experience.

We’ll be back in November with a look at email client market share from August through October 2022. For monthly updates, head to our email client market share site.

Where did we get all this data? Our email client market share stats are pulled from over a billion email opens, anonymously collected, and aggregated with Litmus Email Analytics from July 1-31, 2022. It highlights global trends across all industries and verticals. Some email clients may be over- or under-represented, particularly with mobile and webmail. This is due to image blocking or image caching, most notably with Gmail. Still curious? Learn how we get this data.

apple-mail-audience

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Kimberly Huang

Kimberly Huang

Kimberly Huang is a Content Marketing Manager at Litmus