[caption id="attachment_142888" align="aligncenter" width="1592"] Apps come and go, and users snap them up in droves[/caption] Developers release flashy new apps all the time, but how many are actually finding their way onto users’ phones? More to the point, how many apps are users typically downloading? App Annie has a good idea, and it highlights the aggressiveness of the competition out there. Taking a worldwide look at app downloads, App Annie says about 70 percent of us download at least one app every month. That number varies – South Korea hovers at around 77 percent, while the United Kingdom is a bit more pragmatic at 65 percent – but the mean is just over two-thirds. As the study notes: “In half of the countries analyzed, over half of all users installed two or more apps.” Those of us who download 2-4 apps per month also rank highly. In South Korea, 60 percent of users download two apps per month, a stark contrast to the UK’s 45 percent. If we’re breaking these numbers out to users who download only one, two, three or four apps monthly, some geographies have vociferous mobile app users: some 33 percent of South Koreans download four apps a month, while roughly 17 percent download just one. [caption id="attachment_143257" align="aligncenter" width="2928"] Apps downloaded by country[/caption] In more established areas, the numbers aren’t quite as promising. App Annie doesn’t provide exact numbers, but the United States looks to have about the same number of users downloading one and four new apps monthly. It's the same situation in the UK and Mexico. In all queried countries, the smallest percentage went to those downloading three new apps per month. Discoverability is also a problem. With iOS 11, Apple will debut a new App Store with the goal of making it a true destination for customers, but existing figures trouble us. Only 20 percent of users find mobile software via the App Store or Google Play. We also know optimizing your store landing page is critical, and a quick dip through the Android and iOS portals proves that not enough developers are taking the necessary steps to appropriately highlight their products. AppAgent’s Peter Fodor says the magic window for click-through on the App Store and Google Play is short. “We discovered that the average time people spend on a store listing is 7 seconds,” he writes. “The fact is, the vast majority of people leave the page even sooner. Engaged users hang around for a little longer, but they all follow the same process: check the icon, view the first two screenshots, and scan the first line of the app description.” These trends could reverse themselves with the advent of augmented reality (AR). Apple’s ARKit is set to debut alongside iOS 11 and the newest iPhone, which the company will unveil September 12. Google’s ARCore was also announced this week, but the company is not offering a public release timeframe for it. It doesn’t mean developers can simply add augmented reality to their apps and users will flock to them; but it might breathe a bit of new life into mobile platforms.