Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo & Co. – webmail usage in the European Union [study]

In the last months, I shared several European ecommerce, internet and email figures. Here’s another interesting one. Ever wondered, how popular cloud-based email services like Hotmail/Outlook.com, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail are – e.g. in the U.K., in Germany, or in Sweden? Answers come from a recent comScore study. I just felt like putting some of them into a map.

Yes, admittedly, my results are ugly. The figure looks more like “Pacman invading Europe” than like an infographic. 😉 However, at a second glance, it’s quite informative, isn’t it? Note: Each bubble (pacman’s size) represents the absolute number of web-mailing users, pacman’s eye represents growth in percentage points (no eye = no growth or no data), the pie charts and the country colors show the percentage of people using web-based email in each country (bigger mouth and lighter blue = less webmail users.).

So, webmail usage grew by 14% year-on-year within the EU according to comScore’s tracking. From a marketing perspective, that’s not a bad thing: many webmailers support video in email, they play animated gifs, etc. British users already love webmail and the rate of growth is still high, whereas in Germany it seems more people prefer their good old desktop clients. Also interesting: Hotmail (Outlook.com) dominates webmail usage. At least if you look at the big three across Europe. (In Germany for instance, GMX and Web.de own about 50% of market shares.)