Mail… What’s in it for Apple?
The Mail App is pre-configured on the Home Screen (the most valuable real estate on your iPhone), yet the word mail isn’t even mentioned in Apple’s 10-k. This is clearly an important app, not only to Apple, but also to Apple’s customers. iPhone users frequently drop the Mail app into their dock (the bottom tray on your screen that never goes away). Try googling images of “iPhone home screen”. You’ll see as many photos with the Mail app moved to the dock as you do with the pre-configuration.
So what’s up with Apple’s “nothing to see here” approach? It turns out mail isn’t as boring as you might think! In eight slides, I unveil the mystery, breaking down the logic and the numbers behind Apple mail.
The Logic
Mail is the stealth app that holds its own alongside Safari and Music when it comes to providing value and utility to users.
Bear in mind that Apple is a product company. All of its cool software and services are designed to keep you buying more iPhones, iPads, and Macs (I dive into this in detail here). In this respect, Mail is no different. However, it is unique in it’s somewhat parasitic nature. More on that shortly! For now, it suffices to say that Apple Mail provides cheap reach and utility - it’s an email client that serves as a wrapper around other email clients/services and captures passive market share of opens.
Privacy is great marketing these days and Apple is uniquely positioned among the MAANG (Meta, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) companies as it’s the only one whose business model isn’t powered by consumer data. The Mail app is not only a great utility, but it is a prominent value point in Apple’s privacy messaging.
The Numbers
I think most readers might be surprised to learn that Apple is the dominant email client. I’ll elaborate more on why in a bit. But since the release of Mail Privacy Protection, Apple has gained 6 percentage points market share of opens. This is proof that Apple is tapping into a top concern of users.
So I promised I’d circle back to a couple of points:
- Why is Apple the dominant email client?
- Apple is the dominant email client because of how market share is measured. Litmus looks at the share of opens. “Opens” means users who received and opened an email. In other words, they saw it in the inbox and clicked through. Apple Mail is an aggregator, you can think of it as a wrapper around your true email service. For example, if you have a Gmail address, but you have connected to the Mail app and opened your email through the Mail app, Apple gets the credit. This leads me to my next point…
- Why is Apple Mail parasitic?
- Apple essentially siphons off email opens from other email services. Companies like Google host email accounts partly because they make money by serving ads. When Google hosts email accounts, it eats the cost of the gigabytes of storage it gives users for free. When users open their Gmail in Apple Mail, Google loses out on the ability to serve them an email ad (making that business less profitable). At the same time, Apple gains by not having to pay the storage and maintenance costs that come with providing an email service, yet still being able to provide a valuable utility to its users.
Summary: What’s in it for Apple?
- Apple develops software and services to sell more hardware. Mail is no different from other services in this respect. It’s a service that adds incremental value to the ecosystem, increasing the demand of Apple products.
- Mail is a sweet deal for Apple. Mail provides significant utility to users, but Apple doesn’t have to pay the usual cost of running an email service (hosting, etc).
- Mail Privacy Protection also plays an important role in Apple’s Privacy messaging strategy. This represents intangible branding value.