August 2016: share of email reading by client

According to the latest US statistics, published in August 2016, email reading was distributed across clients as follows:

1. iPhone

30.9%

2. iPad

19.5%

3. Outlook

16.5%

4. Gmail

11.3%

5. Android

10.6%

6. AOL

4%

7. Yahoo! Mail

2.1%

8. Apple Mail

1.9%

9. Windows Live Mail

1.3%

10. Hotmail

0.8%

Reading email on a mobile phone: 61%

Reading email on a desktop computer: 20%

Reading email through a webmail browser: 19%

What does this tell us?

1. Email is still widely used to deliver information. On whether email is outdated, see The channel you thought was obsolete is the one that works.
2. The email we send must be responsive and legible on a mobile phone. For designing for smartphone readers, see Reading email on a smartphone is now the norm.
3. Send timing has to match when people are on their phones. For timing your sends, see How do you get more of your email read?.
4. Email has to engage the reader in the shortest possible time, because they do not spend long reading.