New figures from email delivery service SendGrid suggest that 46% of email in the UK is opened on an Apple iPhone, while 18% is opened on an iPad. The figures come from two 10-day survey periods in 2013 and 2014, covering more than eight billion emails sent by over 125,000 companies.

However, iPhone email usage is falling in the UK while iPad use is increasing. Year-on-year figures show iPhone-opened email falling by 13% and email opened on an iPad growing by 55%. iPad email usage has increased even more dramatically in other parts of Europe: up 85% in France, 92% in Germany and 97% in Spain.

Android usage for email dropped by 31% in the UK from 2013, although there have been significant year-on-year increases in Turkey (54%), France (65%) and Belgium (89%).

Globally, SendMail says Windows-based devices are the fastest growing segment for opening email. 320 million emails were opened on Windows devices in the last year, up 147% year-on-year. Despite this, Apple devices - Mac desktops, Macbooks, iPhones and iPads - were the most-used platform for opening email in 2014: they were responsible for opening 358 million SendGrid-delivered emails in the last year.

Jim Franklin, CEO of SendGrid, said “In the 32 years since the invention of email, Europeans have taken to a broad array of devices and operating systems to receive and send email. Now, mobile is dominant, but it’s interesting to see the varying rates of adoption of different devices across Europe. The Germans are having a love affair with the iPad while the Brits are falling out of love with Android. Despite the prominence of Mac globally, Windows is a particular favourite in France for email usage. For the first time since we began studying global email trends in 2010, the US has fallen below 50% of email opens for us. This puts us in a better position to provide a lens on email trends globally, and particularly in Europe where we continue to send more wanted email and build out our service.”

SendGrid delivers more than 100 billion emails per year and is used by 175,000 web application companies and developers, including Uber, Foursquare, Pinterest, Airbnb, Twilio, Spotify and Pandora.