Going by the recent announcements from Zimbra - the Yahoo-owned email and collaboration software - the supposed increase in the number of users appear to be ominous to Gmail's popularity. All the more so since Zimbra's mailboxes are paid ones, and not free accounts!

Zimbra has lately announced that it has gone past the 40 million mark with regard to number of users. However, as things actually stand, the company in fact has almost 31.4 million users in the US, a wee bit more than comScore's 31.2 million unique monthly US visitors' figures for Gmail the month of January.

Moreover, the recent Google reports of the10 million users number for the free and pay editions of its business application package, Google Apps, also falls behind the Zimbra figures.

Figuratively speaking, there is little doubt that the noteworthy Zimbra numbers imply that it may soon get ahead of other widely-accepted webmail services like AOL Email and Windows Live Hotmail. Nonetheless, the questionable aspect of the numbers stated by Zimbra is that they are self-reported figures.

Though a large part of Zimbra's growth has been fueled by its momentous Comcast deal in 2007, the new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has remarked that email is becoming "increasingly critical" to the haggard company. Even Heather Hopkins of Hitwise has noted that email accounts for over one-third of total Yahoo traffic!