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It's Not Snapchat Or Instagram's App That's #1 With Millennials, It's Amazon's

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Statista

Amazon is the app that most people between 18 and 34 say they couldn't live without. It's not Snapchat or Gmail or Instagram. It's Amazon's app to sell you more stuff. According to a survey by Comscore 35% of those surveyed said they would be lost without Amazon's app. Gmail is close, at 30% while Facebook is at 29%.

As you might expect, by virtue of the things it owns Facebook really dominates if you add up all its properties. Messenger is 18%, WhatsApp is 11% and Instagram is also 11%, so with all Facebooks apps totaled the 18-34s are spending 69% of their time in the Facebook universe.

The news is really good for Facebook in general too, it's the number one app in terms of monthly uses, counting 147 million Americans as users and 81% penetration in mobile app users. Things are not good for Twitter, they really don't get much of a look in with not a single appearance in the top eight apps of any age group.

The report is interesting for a lot of reasons though, it takes a more general look at how Americans are using their smartphones. For 18 to 24-year-olds the picture is largely as we have come to expect - they use their phones more than any other device. This age group uses a desktop 23% of the time and 66% is on their phone.

Perhaps the worst news is for tablet manufacturers though is that the young really don't use those devices, they account for just 7% of use, which is the same percentage as they use mobile web - say, facebook.com in a browser, rather than via the app. Tablet use is higher in 65+, where it's 12% of the total, but most older users prefer a desktop (53% of use) or a smartphone, which accounted for 27% of use.

App use averages about 2.3 hours per day for Americans, with 18-24s using as much as 3.2 hours per day on their phones. That number decreases with age, the national average of 2.3 hours is also the amount 35 to 44-year-olds spend on phones while 65+ use their handsets online for 1.6 hours per day. Still a decent amount of usage, it has to be said.

In general, though, apps and making money from apps seems to have a bright future. Millennials are happy to pay, with 64% having bought at least one app and 36% having bought none. The highest percentage in app buying was also the largest number of apps, with 19% of respondents having 12 or more paid-for apps on their device. Likewise, in-app purchases were popular too, with 23% of millennials having done so more than 12 times and 23% pressing the button between 5 and 11 times.

Comscore's insights are available to download on its website (registration required), there's some great information in the document about general trends and mobile use.

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