Angry Birds

Christina Liu Yanting Li

Rovio and Angry Birds

It all started with a simple screenshot of an unhappy-looking bird. The simple slingshot game developed by a small Finnish company, pitting various wingless birds against smirking green pigs, has become a worldwide phenomenon. Since its release in 2009, Rovio Entertainment’s Angry Birds application has been downloaded by more than half a billion people worldwide.1 Despite its success in terms of numbers, Rovio’s market prominence was due entirely to one very casual gaming application. The company had to find ways to expand their scope and generate revenue while trying to stay above their many competitors. The gaming industry has always been saturated with games, and most that achieve sudden peak popularity lack long-term impact. With this in mind, Rovio’s goal was simple - they had a hit game on their hands, and they were going to use the opportunity to turn it into something more instead of letting it fade into obscurity.

Company Background

Rovio was formed by three students from the Aalto University School of Science and Technology in Helsinki, Finland. After a success with a mobile game development competition, they decided to form their own company, initially named Relude. One of these founders was Niklas Hed, who now runs the company with his cousin, CEO Mikael Hed. The startup company, located in Espoo, Finland, was small, and at first the three founders did most of the work developing games. By 2005, after receiving a small investment, the company expanded to 25 people and renamed itself Rovio. Rovio sustained itself by doing projects for other companies such as EA, but nothing garnered them enough independent commercial success to sustain revenue.2 The gaming landscape changed in 2007 with the release of the iPhone, along with the Apple App store. This solved distribution problems, but Rovio had yet to release a game to conquer the app store. Acknowledging the competitiveness of the application market,...