EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Angry Birds developer Rovio is aiming to hit 1 billion ‘fans’ for the game as it continues to expand its presence around the world.
Speaking to Mobile World Live at the recent Nokia World event in London, Rovio chief marketing officer and 'Mighty Eagle' Peter Vesterbacka said: “We want to be the first entertainment brand with a billion fans. So it’s really a billion people engaging with us every single day – people we can talk to, communicate with, have a dialogue [with] through our game. We think that that’s something that hasn’t been done before.”
Vesterbacka added that the company expects to hit 1 billion downloads of Angry Birds games “sometime next year.”
According to Vesterbacka the growth of Angry Birds – which recently hit half a billion downloads – is accelerating, something he attributed to the sheer number of devices coming onto the market, including the iPhone 4S, Android and Nokia’s Lumia and Asha devices unveiled at Nokia World. Rovio announced at Nokia World that Angry Birds would be coming to the vendor’s mid-tier Series 40 OS, which runs on the Asha devices.
Vesterbacka said an IPO is one of the potential options Rovio is looking at for the future, although it has no “concrete plans on when and where.” He said keeping the company’s options open is important as it allows the flexibility and freedom to continue to build the Angry Birds brand. “Right now we are insanely profitable so we can fund our own growth, no problem,” he said.
Part of the company’s plan to develop the Angry Birds brand globally is to take the brand into physical goods, which already include soft toys and a book. “Everybody else is talking about virtual goods, we’re actually going the physical route," he said. Such is the extent to which Rovio is doing this, Vesterbacka said in a Nokia World panel session that it no longer sees itself as just a games company.
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