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Who says the Angry Birds phenomenon is slowing down?
Gamers may be tiring out from the many iterations of the flying birds, but they continue to rake in the big bucks for Rovio.
The Finnish company said today that for calendar year 2012 it posted sales of 152 million euros ($194.8 million), or a little more than double its revenue from the preceding year. Its earnings before interest and taxes were 76.8 million euros ($98.4 million), up 64 percent from 2011.
The company was helped by the launch of four titles in the year: Angry Birds Space, Amazing Alex, Bad Piggies, and Angry Birds Star Wars.
The new games helped Rovio hit 1 billion downloads last May. It had 263 million monthly active users in December.
Angry Birds Star Wars, which mashed up its trademark birds vs. pigs game play with characters from the famed space saga, proved to be the most enduring, and remains a top 10 game in Apple’s App Store. The other Angry Birds-related games, Bad Piggies and Angry Birds Space, also saw success, with Bad Piggies ranked No. 31, just ahead of the original Angry Birds.
The other game, Amazing Alex, was a departure from Rovio’s core franchise and after a strong start, fizzled quickly. Its struggles illustrate the challenges that a company with an established brand like Rovio faces in replicating the kind of success it saw with Angry Birds.
Still, the company is growing fast. Last year, it more than doubled its work force to 518 employees.
Despite the increasingly common belief that Angry Birds fad is going away, Rovio has intensified its efforts on the franchise, introducing an assortment of toys, clothes, backpacks, and even sodas bearing the Angry Birds name. The company is also branching out into media with a cartoon and even a movie, which is slated for release in 2016.
Angry Birds come to roost in Rovio’s headquarters (pictures)
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