• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, April 22, 2015

Overall, shopping apps have the highest penetration in the U.S. and Amazon’s Android dominance does not extend as much outside.

A new international study of Android smartphone activity, conducted by mobile measurement firm Informate, found that smartphone users from the U.S. spend the most time on shopping apps, followed by India.

Here’s the breakdown of the reach of shopping apps in the 12 countries studied:

• 59% -- U.S.
• 46% -- India
• 29% -- Indonesia
• 24% -- Thailand
• 20% -- Qatar
• 19% -- Brazil
• 17% -- Malaysia
• 17% -- South Africa
• 15% -- Mexico
• 12% -- Argentina
• 9% -- Turkey
• 8% -- Philippines

Informate assembled consumer panels in 12 countries by distributing a free utility app that enables consumers to monitor their data usage on smartphones and tablets by measuring on-device and network activity.

Each panelist opts in and the data is collected anonymously and aggregated. Panel size varied by country, with the U.S. panel having 1,800 participants and India 7,800, for example.

The researchers told me that the data is Android only because it has the highest populations of users in the 12 countries measured. Also unclear is why these 12 were selected

Of course, without Apple included, this eliminates a significant portion of shopping activity in the U.S marketplace, but there are at least some Android behavioral tidbits here.

For Android-based shopping apps, smartphone users from the U.S. spend the maximum time followed by India.

No gender skew was seen across countries except for the U.S., where engagement on shopping apps is much higher among females.

For Amazon, reach among American consumers was 34% during the one-month study, more than the combined reach of the number two and three ranked shopping apps. Here are the top Android-based shopping apps in the U.S., according to the survey:

• 34% -- Amazon
• 16% -- Walmart
• 16% -- eBay
• 5% -- Dunkin’ Donuts
• 4% -- Walgreens

But Amazon is far from the top in the other countries. For example, in India it’s Flipkart (27%), Snapdeal (19%) and Amazon (12%), barely ahead of OLX Classifieds (11%).

The results by region may differ, but all the shopping app usage is on the rise.