Google has announced some of the most loved apps of the previous year 2014 as part of its year-end roundup. They have provided different categories such as games, apps, music, movies and books. Here is a brief summary of analysis of the same –

1. Fastest growing category – Health & Fitness
   This insight shows the willingness of scores of Android users to make health and fitness a part of their daily grind.
   
   Below is a list of top downloads by category – 
2. Education – Duolingo – This is an immensely helpful app for new language learners across the world who want to make an impact with their language capabilities
3. Social – Facebook – No surprises here considering the 1.2+ billion users already logged on to Facebook
4. Sports – NFL Mobile – It brings all the action in football to your smartphone device, in form of breaking news, insights, highlights and live game scores
5. Health & Fitness – MyFitnessPal – As per the app’s website, millions of people have lost unwanted weight, thanks to its calorie counter.
6. Music – Pandora – The music streaming and automated recommendation services helps in effortless and easy music discovery for millions of music fans who seek songs and albums as per their preferences.
7. Entertainment – NetFlix – The on-demand Internet media streaming service stood as strong favorites in North America, parts of Europe as well as in South America
8. Photography – Flipagram – The app has been popular for its offering of creating short videos from a set of images of photos and overlaying it with sound or music as per user preferences
9. Travel – TripAdvisor – The app featuring reviews and travel-related content from actual travelers in forums has notched top spot in the travel category thanks to its clean layout and handy reviews

Here are some more common and popular categories in which we have listed top 3 apps. So if you don’t have these on your mobile, you can go ahead and download it, because that’s precisely what millions of Android smart device users across the world are doing.

1.      Most Downloaded Games 

1. Candy Crush Saga
2. Don’t Tap the White Tile
3. Farm Heroes Saga
4. Subway Surfers
5. Clash of Clans

2.      Most Downloaded Music 

1. Song of the Year – Dark Horse by Katy Perry
2. Song of the Summer – Fancy by Iggy Azalea
3. Album of the Year – Frozen: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

3.      Most Read News Articles 

1. 15 90s Teen Hearthrobs who’ve resurfaced on TV
2. 50 More Awesome Facts (About Everything)
3. 10 Most Miserable Cities in America

4.      Best News Sources of the Year 

1. The New York Times
2. TMZ
3. Forbes Now

5.      Movies and TV

1. Movie of the Year – Frozen
2. TV Show of the Year – The Walking Dead
3. Comeback Movie – Toy Story

6.      Books of the Year

1. The Fault in Our Stars
2. Fifty Shades of Grey
3. Divergent

This will serve a good pointer to users to download apps that are much appreciated and met with worldwide acclaim.

2014 marked a substantial increase in usage, quality and quantity of mobile apps. While app stores for Android and iOS crossed more than a million apps hosted way back in January 2014, it also set a new high in terms of downloads. As of Oct ’14, there were 85 billion downloads in Apple app store¹

With games (20.38%), education (10.36%) and business (9.43%)² forming the top 3 segments of apps available on app stores in September 2014, smartphone user interest has certainly been versatile. The downloads came from a large swathe of industries and niches including publishing, games, entertainment, music, stores, utility, enterprise and others. Since the birth of smartphones, apps have not only been attracting extensive investment from marketers of all forms but also converting it into billions of dollars as revenues. This trend is only set to grow further, and the onslaught of several startups is only going to fuel the practice. Now that we are well into 2015, here’s looking back at the best trends set in the app market.

Growth of messaging apps

From WeChat (438 million users in Nov ‘14) to Facebook Messenger (200 million) and several players like Viber (105 million), Line (170 million), and KakaoTalk (50 million), messaging apps have seen a massive increase led by WhatsApp (600 million)³. Smartphone users have been found to set a clear division between communicating through a social network (Facebook messenger) and exclusive messaging apps. However, messaging apps of today aren’t just limited to texts and picture messages. Today, to send a video instantly, one needn’t create and send an MMS. It can be easily done over platforms like Lettrs and Cyber Dust and more importantly in a bare minimum of data usage. Messaging apps are also integrating music, shopping and even games to make the interface much more entertaining and engaging.

Educational apps

There has been a substantial rise in the number of educational apps in 2014. Tablets and smartphones are proving to be a great means of information exchange and spreading awareness. In some schools in California, iPads have been included in the school kit to create better access to education and syllabuses. This certainly is a great moment for developers as their designs are directly helping create a better society and not just entertaining kids (games).

Enterprise apps

Some of the most innovative apps brought into the stores have been developed by companies, to be used by their staff. Enterprise apps have been able to break the barrier and create remote collaborations and easier team building. Taking a closer look, enterprise apps like HP Flow CM, Worx Home, IBM Worklight and Quip have been able to bring about a change in the way companies and entrepreneurs do business.

Free gaming

Gaming has always been a much wanted accessory with mobile device. However, since the launch of smartphones, gaming has gained much prominence among users. 2014 has seen a rise in constructive and free-to-use gaming apps with popular titles like Candy Crush Saga, Lumosity, The New York Times Crossword and Angry Birds.

Internet of things

The most talked about titles in the app world come from the wearable apps, including Google Glass and Smart Watches. While there is a lot of technological challenge involved in this category, they seem to be the hottest topics in the Android and iOS marketplaces.

Stepping into 2015, we can only say that the app industry will continue to spread its wings and we certainly can expect to be impressed.

1- http://www.statista.com/statistics/263794/number-of-downloads-from-the-apple-app-store/
2 – http://www.statista.com/statistics/270291/popular-categories-in-the-app-store/
3 – http://was-gb.wascdn.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Slide41.png

GoodWorkLabs CEO Vishwas Mudagal was an esteemed speaker at the TEDx event that happened in Bangalore, organized by Symbiosis Institute of Business and Management (SIBM). He spoke on a catchy topic of “Congratulations! You Failed.” The talk was appreciated by one and all.

“From now onwards, whenever you fail – just congratulate yourself,” said Vishwas Mudagal, stressing on the importance of following ones passion rather than getting bogged down by failures or chasing a myth called success. ‘One should utilize failures to bounce back in life because failures are nothing but experiments which teach us to succeed in a bigger way,’ he said, sharing his life experiences about ‘Success & Failures’ at the TEDx talk, which had the theme of Carpe Diem.

Here are few pics. (video to be uploaded shortly)

VISHWAS MUDAGAL FEATURED IN TOP 11 BANGALORE BASED PERSONALITIES OF 2014 BY DECCAN CHRONICLE

Vishwas Mudagal, CEO of GoodWorkLabs – ‘The fastest growing company of 2014’ award winner – and the best-selling author, was on the cover page of the popular newspaper Deccan Chronicle‘s year ender special on Bengaluru Chronicle. The special featured Top 11 Personalities from the Silicon Valley of India — Bangalore — who have moved leaps and bounds in 2014.

Vishwas said “It’s amazing to be sharing space with such incredibly talented people who are the stalwarts of their respective fields. The newspaper called them “the young and the restless who took a brand new calling, creating their own body of work!” It’s great to be on the cover page for this special one.”

2014 has been a year of tremendous growth for GoodWorkLabs. We have successfully established ourselves as the top firm to outsource product development, UX design, mobile application innovation and games. The revenues of the company grew manifolds during the year, and more importantly we signed contracts with top clients, delivering path breaking products and innovations. We are now one of the world’s best known companies to build highly sophisticated products. Today, we have clients from the west-coast of the US to east-coast of Australia, covering all timezones, and the products we build touch millions of lives everyday. We are proud of what we are and what we build.

As a testimony to our growth and thumbs up from global clients, we have been awarded the ‘Fastest Growing Indian Company Excellence’ Award by International Achievers Conference that was held in Bangkok, Thailand, earlier this month.

We would like to thank all our clients and more importantly our rockstar employees to make this happen.

Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year! Cheers from GoodWorkLabs!

Vishwas Mudagal, CEO of GoodWorkLabs, was covered in CII Communique – October edition.

Here are the excerpts.

“Yi Guwahati organised an interactive session with Mr Vishwas Mudagal, CEO & Co-founder, GoodWorkLabs on youth entrepreneurship, on 5 September.

Mr. Mudagal also spoke about his book ‘Losing My Religion’ for young enthusiastic individuals who wish to become entrepreneurs.

Ms. Dipannita Jaiswal, MD, Bahmaputra Teleproductions siad that entrepreneurship has a key role in the growth of the country as it creates job opportunities and encourages innovation”

Read the entire communique here.

SiliconIndia magazine has rated GoodWorkLabs amongst Top 50 Mobile App Companies in India. Today GoodWorkLabs is known for building cutting-edge products and solutions catering to the demands of ever changing global markets. In a span of 2 years, GoodWorkLabs has a plethora of customers across the globe that vouch for GoodWorkLabs attention-to-detail, aesthetic sense and capabiliy to delivery high-quality products on time, every time. The company has established itself as ‘the’ brand in the high-end mobile apps design and development space globally.
With offices in Bangalore, India and Fremont, California, the company is witnessing rapid growth and has a full-service outsourced-product-development team with expertise in Product Consulting, Business Analysis & Research, UX Design, Robust Software Development, QA, Continuous Deployment and Measured Outcome to create a ‘build-measure-learn’ feedback loop to help succeed products.

To know more, check the links –
Silicon India top 50
GoodWorkLabs details on Silicon India

Vishwas Mudagal, CEO of GoodWorkLabs, was part of the power panel at Bangalore Literature Festival 2014 that was held on 28th Sep at Bangalore! He shared the stage with industry heavy weights Kiran Mazumdar (CEO-Biocon), TV Mohandas Pai (Co-founder of Infosys and MD- Manipal Education), Harish Bijoor (Brand Consultant) and Ajit Balakrishnan (Rediff.com founder) on the topic ‘Entrepreneurship in India: Building your own blocks.’

It was an engaging session on entrepreneurship in India, startup ecosystem in Bangalore, books, personal experiences, etc. Everyone pointed out that there is no concept of failure in entrepreneurship but only stepping stones. The session was widely covered in the media.

The leading outsourced product development company GoodWorkLabs was featured in the anchor story in The Telegraph, the largest newspaper of the Eastern India. Here are excerpts from the story –

Start young, take risks and break out of the rut! Vishwas Mudagal did just that to have his share of ups and downs before tasting sweet success. Now, the 32-year-old entrepreneur-writer-motivation speaker wants the younger generation in the Northeast to dream big and follow its passion from college itself.

“The idea behind GoodWorkLabs was to provide high-end technology solutions to other companies. Today, we have 20 clients, including Flipkart and Samsung. About 80 per cent of our clients are based outside the country,” he said.

On what makes his firm acceptable in the global market, Mudagal said, “It’s about aesthetic sense, scalability, innovation and the ability to build a product incrementally. We believe we have acquired these traits and our clients have responded well. Not many IT service companies have in-depth knowledge of building a product, as doing that requires going through a gamut of services over a period of time.

The Northeast, he said, has a huge potential for entrepreneurship but needs to have the right momentum. “The impetus on entrepreneurship as of now is not there. There is the need for developing infrastructure and building a marketing campaign. Having said that, the region has abundant human resources. A lot of young people from the Northeast have done well in cities outside the region,” he said.

Read the complete story “Breaking Out Of The Rut Mantra For Success” Story here.

CEO of GoodWorkLabs, Vishwas Mudagal on a recent visit to Guwahati spoke to The Assam Tribune (the biggest newspaper in North East) on how to give a push to the economy and IT sector in the North East. Excerpts below –

“Investors want proper infrastructure and investor-friendly atmosphere. But, the State Governments of the region have not been able to provide these to the investors so far,” Mudagal claimed.

The IT Expert, however, said that his company is willing to invest in the North East especially in the software and mobile applications. “We need to conduct a feasibility study on the North-east to carry forward our plans,” he informed. The Bangalore-based IT company has been providing IT solutions to several leading companies, including Samsung, Flipkart and Klub Hub.

Mudagal also appealed to the youth to start business by utilizing available resources. “The region has vast resources, so the younger generation should start business instead of Government’s jobs. But at the same time the banks and other financial institutions should also play a key role in extending their credit support to youth,” he observed.