People don't just do email in business settings. The proposition with Exchange was that you had email and calendaring together. This combination likely predates Exchange, but it was the juggernaut that took over big companies.
Now you have GSuite and others copying that approach. In terms of clients, Outlook is probably a bigger Gmail client than Thunderbird within the enterprise due to the fact that business people in many places are only familiar with it. Yes, the protocols are supported in other clients, but going with something else is a in practice a peculiarity. I don't think that is healthy, but it's what's happening out there and impacting the potential of any other client.
In the early days, Phoenix knew what it was about and had a team driving a really focused product experience for what would become Firefox. This was a very important part of why Firefox had the impact it had.
Thunderbird always felt like a "me too" product focusing on email. In 2002, the set of criteria for global success (an integrated email and calendar experience) was already well defined. The product never got any razor sharp focus and an opportunity was squandered. It's hard to see how Thunderbird can ever achieve what it might have done.
Now you have GSuite and others copying that approach. In terms of clients, Outlook is probably a bigger Gmail client than Thunderbird within the enterprise due to the fact that business people in many places are only familiar with it. Yes, the protocols are supported in other clients, but going with something else is a in practice a peculiarity. I don't think that is healthy, but it's what's happening out there and impacting the potential of any other client.
In the early days, Phoenix knew what it was about and had a team driving a really focused product experience for what would become Firefox. This was a very important part of why Firefox had the impact it had.
Thunderbird always felt like a "me too" product focusing on email. In 2002, the set of criteria for global success (an integrated email and calendar experience) was already well defined. The product never got any razor sharp focus and an opportunity was squandered. It's hard to see how Thunderbird can ever achieve what it might have done.