<p>Cue released data this week that shows that the average number of email messages received by users of its service in 2012 was 5,579. While that figure is not representative of the market at large, it does show how much traffic many email inboxes handle year in, year out.</p><p>And how are we coping with that onslaught? Not very well. Cue reports that average email response time lengthened from 2.2 days to 2.5 days. That's not surprising given that Cue users wrote a staggering 41,368 email words on average in 2012, the equivalent of the 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies.Our Email Tools Are Prehistoric</p><p>The email tools many use to manage this tsunami were created in pre-historic times. Microsoft Outlook dates back to 1992 with the release of Outlook for MS-DOS. Its Outlook Express 1.0 stable mate was released in 1996.</p><p>Based on my analysis of data compiled by Campaign Monitor, these Microsoft desktop clients continue to rule the roost, with about 30% of desktop usage. Web-based email is the overall leader at 48% but that includes mobile as well. Note that these figures are not mutually exclusive since many people now use several ways to access email.</p><p><a href="http://readwrite.com/2013/01/07/innovating-the-email-inbox-without-deleting-all">Keep reading...</a></p>