Angry Birds Going After China

While reveling in their recent success — 140 million downloads, ya’ll — Rovio announced their next move for the Angry Birds franchise. The target? The far east; China, to be exact. T...
Angry Birds Going After China
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  • While reveling in their recent success — 140 million downloads, ya’ll — Rovio announced their next move for the Angry Birds franchise. The target? The far east; China, to be exact. The goal for the company behind Angry Birds isn’t that much different than their U.S. strategy: Domination of the mobile device gaming market.

    Thanks to a report at AppleInsider, the Angry Birds plan for Chinese domination was revealed during the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing earlier this week. During the presentation, Rovio executive Peter Vesterbacka was quite boastful of Angry Birds, saying the brand has grown faster than any before it. Owing this confidence to the Angry Birds ever-growing downloads total, it’s easy to see why Rovio thinks their game will just as successful in China.

    It also helps that China has over 300 million mobile device users, giving the Angry Birds a lot of potential targets. Rovio’s goal for the Angry Birds takeover of China calls for 100 million downloads, and with so many members of the Chinese population using mobile technology, that goal isn’t so far-fetched.

    As for Angry Birds’ current success story, Vesterbacka thanks Apple and its ability to distribute content for the opportunity to prosper:

    “Apple created the distribution for us that we didn’t have before. All of a sudden, great games mattered,” said Vesterbacka. “We are seeing smartphone growth explode, and we are riding that wave.”

    He also credited the game’s popularity to the character designs, using Pixar’s track record with memorable characters as a template for Angry Birds. Oddly enough, however, while heaping credit on Apple’s environment, Vesterbacka was none to friendly to the Android market, calling it fragmented and a “very Google centric ecosystem.”

    Because, yeah, Apple’s mobile architecture has such the reputation of being open and accessible for all devices… Nevertheless, it’s pretty easy to see why Rovio is so indebted to Apple. Without the iPhone platform, Angry Birds would most likely have the designation of being just another game.

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