Hello,
I'm desperately looking for some statistics about usage of POP versus IMAP versus Exchange-MAPI, especially in professional context. I know IMAP is used for accessing mails from mobile devices with limited bandwidth, whereas POP is the good old standard, and Exchange is more business-oriented. Does someone know the approximate percentage of usage of each protocol ?
Thanks !
IMAP & POP are universal.
Exchange is for servers running exchange only. Which means you will need to purchase an exchange server, and use Outlook in order to read your email.
IMAP keeps all your email on the server (so if you read it on your mobile, then your computer will still show the message as being read)
POP will download all your mail to your computer, and then delete it from the server (so you can only check your email from a single computer)
As far as actual usage statistics, I am not sure, but I highly prefer IMAP, as it lets me check my email from all 5 of my computers
I don't think anyone is using Exchange-MAPI on the internet, just inside local and private networks. MAPI uses dynamic RPC calls and it is not really designed to work over the internet. I think you can use "MAPI over HTTP", but that's just a hack to enable low-end mobile devices use a local app instead of the OWA...
As of statistics, you could on the one hand search for numbers of Exchange licenses sold plus Windows CE powered smartphones and make an estimation, and on the other hand search for protocol traffic statistics for IMAP4 and POP3