Google picks out the best Play Store Apps for 2016

• Fun photo apps make up trending apps on the Play Store.
• Pokemon GO and Clash Royale dominate the trending game category

WITH 2016 drawing to a close and 2017 looming ahead, it seems fitting to take round up some of the best apps that have rocked the Google Play Store.

Google has revealed the top trending applications and games of 2016. The categories were broken down by the top trending app globally and locally in Malaysia as well as the most popular games downloaded this year.

Breaking the entries down by categories, the top trending apps globally are Google’s own one-to-one video calling app Duo followed by the oddly named face morphing video selfie app MSQRD. Considering that many people use their smartphones as their main camera and edit their photos, it is not surprising that Camera360 - Photo Editor took third place.

It seems that 2016 was also the year of the emoji as people were switching their stock keyboard app for fourth-placed app Keyboard, an emoji keyboard that gives users access to hundreds of different emoticons and emojis.

People were also more health conscious this year and with apps like 30 Day Fitness Challenge they could do workouts at home at any time of the day.

Taking a look at a more Malaysian context, ride sharing app Grab took the lead as the top trending app in Malaysia as more Malaysians used their services as their preferred method of transportation.

Malaysians were also putting their unwanted items up for sale on Mudah.my and imSold more this year as the app took the second and third most trend app spot on the chart respectively.

But apart from selling items online, Malaysians frequently used their mobile devices to book flight tickets on Malaysia Airlines’ app and managed their mobile account using the MyDigi app.

Looking at the top trending games of 2016, it comes to no surprise that the augmented reality phenomenon that was Pokemon GO claimed the throne of the game charts.

This was followed by SuperCell’s competitive one-on-one strategy game Clash Royale which is an off shoot of their immensely popular base building game Clash of Clans.

Though the long-running Japanese anime series Naruto came to an end this year, anime fans could not get enough of the feisty blonde ninja making Ultimate Ninja Blazing the third most popular mobile game on the Play Store.

Those who eat, drink, sleep and play football continued to indulge in their favourite pass time on their mobile devices in Dream League Soccer. Finally the fifth most popular mobile game slither.io is a spiritual successor to the popular Snake game on the classic Nokia phones, where players battle against one another to see which of them can be the longest snake while eliminating the competition.

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