Google has announced its "best stuff of the year" on Google Play for 2014, showing some very interesting trends indeed.
The team at Google Play determined the most popular apps, movies, music, games, books and Newsstand sources.
"It was a big year for entertainment, from games that fed your sweet tooth to apps that kept you fit. Icy movies warmed your hearts, and your go-to party song was literally a dark-horse favorite," said the company in a blog post. "You loved reading stories -- real and imagined -- of love, adventure, and, OK, sometimes lust."
Unsurprisingly Frozen topped the most popular movies list, however perhaps a little more surprisingly the soundtrack for motion picture also topped the most popular music list. As far as TV shows go, The Walking Dead was the favorite, with Toy Story seemingly making a comeback. The late Robin Williams was the most searched for actor of the year.
As mentioned the Frozen soundtrack topped the album of the year list, however Dark Horse by Katy Perry was the song of the year. A separate title was given to 'song of the summer,' which was won by Iggy Azalea with her hit Fancy. The fastest growing genre of music was the soundtrack, which was fueled by Frozen (of course...), Guardians of the Galaxy, Despicable Me 2, The Lego Movie and The Great Gatsby, which all had popular soundtracks on Google Play.
As far as books go, The Fault in Our Stars was most popular, with Fifty Shades of Grey, Divergent, Twelve Years a Slave and Insurgent also making the list.
Of course Google also released the top apps and games of the year in a number of different categories. The most downloaded education app was Duolingo, with the most popular music app being Pandora and the most popular social app being Facebook. One interesting thing to note is that the fastest growing app category is the Health and Fitness category, likely due to the growing popularity of wearable devices. MyFitnessPal led the pack in terms of Health and Fitness app popularity.
While games are technically an app category of their own, games also got their own section. The most downloaded game was, unsurprisingly the Candy Crush saga, with "Don't Tap the White Tile" coming in second and the Farm Heroes saga making third place.
The Google Play Store has been catching up to Apple's App Store in terms of popularity and in terms of revenue. Android has begun moving to wearables, cars and the living room, meaning that building up this ecosystem is extremely important for Google.
