According to Radicati (a technology market research firm) the number of email accounts is expected to grow from 4.1 billion accounts in 2014 to over 5.2 billion accounts by the end of 2018. The total number of email users around the world (for both business and and consumers) is also increasing from over 2.5 billion to over 2.8 billion in 2018. In fact, by 2018 business email will account for over 139.4 billion emails sent and received a day. One final statistic I'll mention is that by the end of 2014 business users sent and received on average of 121 emails a day and this is expected to grow to over 140 emails a day by 2018.
Many organizations around the world are trying hard to combat the use of email internally for communication and collaboration. I already wrote about how Atos is trying to become a zero email company but they aren't the only ones trying to reduce email clutter. Compton Green (an Australian real estate firm), Yum! Brands, IBM, and many others all understand that email is no longer the most effective or efficient way to communicate or collaborate among employees. Today Email is one of the unique personal public identifiers that we all have (another one is our phone number) and is still essential for communication OUTSIDE of the organization.
Although I don't believe email will completely disappear I think it will certainly evolve especially as new collaborative platforms become more widely adopted. In this latest episode of The Future in 5 I talk about the future of email and also share a funny personal story that happened on a recent stay at The Marriott in Boston, check it out!
Jacob Morgan is a futurist, author, and speaker. You can get the first 30 pages of his book for free as well as weekly content on the future of work by subscribing to his newsletter.
