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It is true that the big players get more and more dominant in terms of market share, but worldwide there are many alternatives that seem to be able to make enough profit to survive. Outlook.com and Apple Mail will not go away, Verizon/AOL is huge. GMX is big. Look at all the new encrypted providers like ProtonMail, Tutanota, etc. Plus, there are zillions of smaller providers focusing on professionals and niches. Email services are not too expensive to create and maintain, and there are also many small shops with one or two employees providing good services. The truly hard part is to innovate and come up with something new and interesting that will attract customers away from whatever service they are already on. There is a huge lock-in with email in that the average person is not willing to go to the hassle of switching as long as their existing service continues to work reasonably well. Here in the USA I run across tons of people with old AOL and Hotmail accounts they have had since the dial-up phone modem days.
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