If you were to travel back in time just five years it would've been impossible to predict the way that the mobile phone market has turned out. Who would've guessed, for example, that Apple would enter the industry and change the playing field for everyone else? Who would've thought that Google would become the dominant platform provider that it has? And who on earth would've foretold that one of the biggest selling points for mobile phones would be a game in which players launch flightless birds at flimsy structures with pigs hiding in them?
I wouldn't be surprised if you'll be able to play Angry Birds on your fridge soon.
Simon Dingle, contributor, ITWeb
I'd venture that everyone who will read this article has not only heard of Angry Birds, but played it themselves at least once. It is the single biggest game on mobile phones and is now also a successful range of plush toys, children's books and other paraphernalia.
As addictive as crack-cocaine, Angry Birdshas become not only a ridiculously popular piece of software, but has also accelerated the growing market for casual gaming.
At the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year, I met a man whose business card calls him 'The Mighty Eagle'. His real name is Peter Vesterbacka and he works as chief marketing officer for Rovio - the company behind Angry Birds.
According to him, Angry Birdsis turning into an empire and the company behind it has big plans. And no, they aren't based in San Francisco.
- apparently their knack for silly concepts goes all the way back to the beginning.
Their victory compelled them to form a company called Relude and further develop their ideas. They later sold King of the Cabbage Worldto a company now called Digital Chocolate that repackaged it as Mole War - the first commercial real-time multiplayer game for mobile.
Rovio then went on to develop more games such as Wolfmoon, Swat: Elite Troops, and Cyber Bloodwith an injection of funding from an unnamed investor in 2005.
The crew of developers clearly knew what they were doing, but were losing money for the most part until 2009.
In that year the company embraced Apple's app store model and introduced Angry Birds for iPhone.
Nobody guessed that an explosion would follow - least of all the people at the centre of it.
Angry Birdshas been downloaded over 42 million times and more than 9.2 million people have 'liked' it on Facebook. The game is now available for not only iPhone, but also Windows Phone, Android, as a Facebook app, Web app for Google's Chrome browser and I was surprised to find it on the latest set top boxes from Roku too - complete with motion controls. I wouldn't be surprised if you'll be able to play Angry Birdson your fridge soon.
Earlier this year, Rovio raised $42 million in venture capital, but that's nothing compared to what it must be making from sales of the game itself, in-app purchases and merchandising. The company has become all about Angry Birdsand Vesterbacka told Bloomberg earlier this year that Rovio is considering a public listing as early as next year, with a valuation of over $1.2 billion. He described the franchise as, “insanely profitable”.
He also said the company has a 20-year plan for Angry Birds. Bloomberg quotes him as saying: “Disney started as a black and white cartoon about this little mouse ... Nintendo has been working on Mario for 26 years. Angry Birds is less than two years old.”
I ran into The Mighty Eagle again this year, at Nokia World in London last week. The Finnish smartphone manufacturer had just released a new range of S40 feature phones for developing markets, which now run Angry Birds too, along with Nokia's new Lumina smartphones running Windows Phone, debuted at the event.
He was there in his trademark red Angry Birdshoodie, speaking to fans and handing out stickers and other merchandise. He gave my friend Toby Shapshak a cookbook calledBad Piggies Secret Egg Recipes.
We live in crazy times.
Whenever we speak about new Nokia phones on my 5FM show, Anele always facetiously asks, “but does it have Snake?”
Angry Birdsis the Snakeof the 21st century and a remarkable business story of insight, forward planning and clever marketing that has taken a simple, silly concept and turned it into a billion-dollar business. It wasn't the first game in which you launch things at other things - but it is the only one that matters.
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