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Google launched Gmail on April 1, 2004, and in 2022, with 10 billion downloads on the Google Play Store, the service hit a new milestone – a figure that represents 53% of the US email market. This makes Gmail the fourth app on the Play Store to achieve this landmark; The first three were Google Play Services (a requirement for almost all Android phones that use Google services), YouTube, and Google Maps.
As of January 11, the Google Play Store shows that even Google Chrome and Google Search have crossed the 10 billion download mark. Meanwhile, Google Photos is trailing slightly with over 5 billion downloads.
Gmail is currently available in 72 languages worldwide. As the most popular mail client, the Gmail app is currently second only to the Apple iPhone email app in the US. In October 2018, the number of Gmail users was 1.5 billion. Gmail comes preinstalled on most Android devices, and since most users have used multiple smartphones in their lifetime, it’s no surprise that the number will continue to grow. As of April 2021, Gmail has 27.2% of the email client market share in the US, far behind iPhone email’s 38.9%. While Gmail is the clear leader in new webmail open, the iPhone Mail service is the clear leader in new mobile email. Due to the increasing popularity of every subsequent version of the iPhone series, Apple is likely to hold the overall number one position in the United States this decade, consistently holding over 45% of the US smartphone market share. But these improvement numbers are promising, and if Google is able to accelerate its opening up, it has the potential to catch up with Apple.
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