YouTube and Amazon.com (AMZN) made gains in Piper Jaffray's fall 2019 teen survey.
In the latest edition of its semi-annual Taking Stock with Teens survey, Piper asked 9,500 U.S. teenagers across 42 states about (among other things) their shopping habits, brand preferences and usage of various tech platforms and services.
Though it's worth keeping in mind that the preferences of teens can occasionally be very different than those of older consumers -- as far as tech activity goes, this especially holds true for social media usage -- changes in their preferences and buying patterns can often be a sign of things to come for older demographic groups. One only has to see how traditional TV viewing began declining among younger U.S. consumers during the earlier parts of this decade for a good example.
Here's a look at the numbers Piper's survey turned up for some popular consumer tech products and services.
The iPhone and Apple Watch
A whopping 83% of surveyed teens said they own an iPhone. That's even with Piper's spring 2019 survey and compares with 82% a year ago. In addition, 86% of respondents said they plan for the next smartphone they buy to be an iPhone, a figure that's even with both the spring 2019 and fall 2018 surveys.
Meanwhile, 20% of respondents reported owning an Apple Watch, even with spring 2019 but up from just 12% a year ago. 23% of respondents said they intend to buy a Watch, compared with 22% in spring 2019 and 17% in fall 2018.
Though a discussion of the various reasons why Apple (AAPL) maintains such a high smartphone share among U.S. teens would require a separate article, it's worth noting that the popularity of Apple's iMessage service among U.S. teens is a factor that probably hasn't gotten enough attention, given that iMessage is only available on Apple devices.
YouTube and Netflix
Alphabet/Google's (GOOGL) YouTube passed Netflix (NFLX) for the status of the video service that teens most commonly said was the one they watched the most. Thirty-seven percent of teens reported that YouTube is the service they watched the most, while 35% said it was Netflix. In the spring, the numbers were respectively 32% and 37%. This probably won't help with Reed Hastings' self-professed feelings of "YouTube envy."
But while Netflix lost ground to YouTube, which in 2017 saw its daily global viewing top 1 billion hours, Hastings' firm was still well ahead of rival subscription-based video services in Piper's survey. Only 7% and 3% of respondents respectively said that Hulu and Amazon.com's (AMZN) Prime Video were the video services they watched the most.
Also of note: A mere 12% of respondents said they watched cable TV the most, down from 14% in spring 2019 and 16% in fall 2018.
Amazon.com
Not surprisingly, Amazon remains in a league of its own among U.S. teens when it comes to e-commerce websites. 52% of respondents said that Amazon.com was their favorite shopping website, up from 50% in the spring of 2019 and 47% in the fall of 2018.
Nike (NKE) claimed the #2 spot, with 4% of respondents saying it was their favorite shopping website. Notably, just 2% of respondents said eBay (EBAY) was their favorite, putting the online marketplace in a tie for fifth place with PacSun.
Social Media Platforms
Facebook's (FB) Instagram and Snap Inc.'s (SNAP) remain the most widely-used social media platforms among U.S. teens, with 85% and 81% of respondents respectively saying they use them. Instagram's figure was even with what was reported a year ago, while Snapchat's was down slightly from 84%.
40% of teens said they use Twitter (TWTR) , down from 47% a year ago. And just 31% said they use Facebook proper, down from 36%. Pinterest (PINS) came in at 25%, up slightly from 23%.
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