Say what you will about Facebook, Twitter, and all the other social networks out there that are increasingly becoming our sole medium of communication with others, it’s email that remains king of the hill. Sure, it’s slow, and yes, it’s filled with spam, but everyone has an email account and with email you don’t have to worry about character limits or privacy concerns. That being said, email is becoming less popular according to analysts at comScore who recently discovered that there are 6% fewer people accessing email on their PC when you compare November 2010 and November 2009 numbers. Of those who do use email, there was a 9% drop in the amount of minutes they spent engaged with their GMail, HotMail, or whatever service they used. Demographically speaking it was the 12 to 17 year old crowd that say email usage drop by the most, with 24% of teenagers no longer using grandpa’s digital communication method.
But what about mobile usage? Just because people use email less and less on their home computer doesn’t mean they spend less time with email overall, right? The numbers show that mobile email usage now touches 30% of all Americans with a mobile phone in their pocket. There is also a 40% rise in the number of people who check their email on a daily basis using their mobile, totaling 43.5 million users.
“What we have seen in the smartphone era is the rapid acceleration of data consumption, which has helped drive mobile usage across multiple categories including email. In a relatively short period of time, adoption of mobile email has reached 78 percent of the smartphone population, which is very similar to the penetration of web-based email among Internet users. These findings demonstrate just how quickly channel shifts can occur and why it’s now essential for media brands to have a strong presence in both arenas,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile.