LIVE FROM NOKIA WORLD 2011: Angry Birds developer Rovio Mobile no longer thinks of itself as a games developer as it continues to expand its business beyond the game itself.

“We haven’t really seen ourselves as a games company for a long, long time. We’re really building a next generation entertainment franchise,” Rovio chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka said at Nokia World 2011 in London.

Finland-based Rovio has built a hugely successful merchandise business on the back of the success of Angry Birds, which includes t-shirts, soft toys, board games and, most recently, a cookbook.

Vesterbacka said the company – founded in 2003 – developed 51 games before Angry Birds became a global hit but has now decided to focus its efforts on developing new versions of the game and the related merchandise business.

Part of the continuing development of Angry Birds includes its availability on Nokia’s Series 40 platform, which was announced at Nokia World. The game is already available on Nokia’s Symbian OS and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platforms but its arrival on the mid-tier Series 40 means more users in developing markets can now have access to the game. “We can reach totally new audiences in Africa and India and other developing countries,” Vesterbacka said.

Vesterbacka also alluded to the difficulty of developing mobile games before recent developments in the mobile industry had an impact. “It was actually very difficult to be successful in mobile games before the emergence of smart devices and the app stores. You had to be friends with Nokia or the operators to be successful. We saw the opening when the app store came that now we don’t have to be friends with anybody,” he said.