Newton Mail is, well, weird. It's a really good email app, and it's only improved since we originally reviewed it several years ago. But it's expensive as ever at $50 per year, and that's just a tough sell when Gmail is so good and Microsoft Outlook can offer email alongside a full Office 365 subscription.
But they're still hanging on, and they might have found another lifeline.
Newton Mail finds another buyer
The app was originally slated to go down back in September of 2018. Essential, for some reason, decided to swoop in and buy it up, keeping it alive for another year and a half.
But now Essential is also going belly up, so what's going to happen to Newton? It was scheduled to cease on April 30th, finally and for good, but now they've updated their website to note that they might have another party interested in buying up the service. Which is all well and good, but we have to ask… why?
Clearly Newton Mail does not have a sustainable business model, no matter how good the app itself is. Essential didn't actually do anything with it, and looking back at Andy Rubin's past terrible decisions, that acquisition didn't make a bit of sense and didn't actually change the outcome of anything. So who's going to scoop this one up again? And if a big company does buy it, does that guarantee that it'll last much longer?
It's all up in the air at this point, but it's reasonable to expect a big company like Google or Microsoft to step in, buy Newton, strip it of talent and IP, and personally put it out to pasture. A slightly smaller company could invest it in, potentially adjust the pricing scheme (or do what every other email app does and just sell ads in it) and try and turn it into a serious competitor.
Or this could all just be preliminary talking, and April 30th will come and go and the most expensive email app on the planet will eventually rest in peace.
Newton says they'll update everyone on April 20th. Keep your ears out.
