[cshenoy]

From the Hotmail team: "Really quickly, want to address the IMAP questions that have come up.

    We haven't implemented imap since based on the user feedback and usage data, there isn't a large enough need when you look at the other protocols we provide. for mobile - we believe activesync is the best story. it gives you mail, calendar, and contacts. there is big adoption of the protocol here with android, iphone, and windows mobile. for clients - with the outlook connector, windows live mail client, and pop3, we cover the majority of client scenarios. there are definitely some gaps, but not enough to outweigh the cost. one of the tough trade offs we make. let me know if that doesn't answer the question. -ryan"

Either their user base doesn't know any better (likely) or they have an extremely skewed view of the market (likely).

[viraptor]

User base which knows better will never become their user base, until their strategy changes. This also creates their market view.

Now, which one is the chicken and which one is the egg?

[larrik]

As a consultant, I ran into a LOT of people who preferred POP3 on their phones and non-main devices. They just wanted to have as little email on their phone as possible (which also gives you decent security if the phone is lost).

Combine this with the fact that Outlook is just terrible with IMAP, and I didn't find too many regular users who liked it.

Personally, I wouldn't use anything else, of course.

[thwarted]

How does the choice of protocol determine if there is as little email on non-mail devices as possible? Also, I've seen people screw up POP3 configuration so the mail moves to the downloading device (because it gets deleted from the server after downloading, as they didn't choose the "leave mail on server" option). If your phone is continuously checking for and downloading mail, that less security in the event your phone is lost, because copies of your email potentially exist in multiple places. With POP3, everything is copied (or moved) and you don't get a choice to only download some messages (after looking at subject lines or sender names) and leave some messages on the server.

[larrik]

True, looking back I forgot to include the part where they obsessively delete each email from their device after reading it.

The "Leave Mail" option is very important as well, especially when they really just want to leave the mail on the server long enough to get it on multiple devices (especially their main desktop), but the server has absurd size caps.

It's often a case of their expectations having already been set by their history with POP3, so anything working different is not what they want.

[weaksauce]

Well they had remote access for a while but started charging for it. I stopped using that feature. I think it was only pop3 anyway.