A Comscore report on Internet usage in Europe released yesterday has ranked Mail.ru and Yandex Pochta respectively 4th and 5th web-based mail services in Europe.
In June, the reports says, 276.5 million people in Europe accessed webmail services via their computer, equalling to a 69.5% reach among the Internet audience above 15 years of age. The number of European web-based email users grew by 14% over the past year to 276 million, while total penetration increases by 3.7 percentage points.
Among the top 10 email markets in Europe, Ireland had the fastest growing audience (1.69 million users, up 23% from June 2011), followed by Russia (40.94 million users, up 21%).
Russian providers Mail.ru Mail and Yandex Mail rounded up the top five, attracting 42.3 million and 25.1 million users respectively, and experienced the strongest audience growth rates among the top 5 European web-based email sites.
Microsoft’s Hotmail, recently renamed Outlook.com, remained the top web-based email provider in Europe with 108.2 million visitors (up 1% vs. year ago) for an average of 1.9 hours per user during the month. Google’s Gmail ranked second in the Email category with 74.7 million users but saw a much stronger growth rate of 18 percent over the past year. Yahoo! Mail came in third with 44.3 million users, and was the most engaging email portal among the top 5 (2.1 hours per user).
The report confirmed Russia’s status as Europe’s leading Internet market by number of users. The country’s Internet audience reached 58.8 million monthly users in June, compared to 51.8 for Germany.
