Angry Birds developer Rovio posts €75.4m revenues

PanARMENIAN.Net - Angry Birds has generated hundreds of millions of downloads for Finnish mobile games firm Rovio Entertainment, but the company's financial results for 2011 reveal just how lucrative the franchise was that year, The Guardian reports

The company has reported total revenues of €75.4m (£60.8m) for 2011, with earnings before tax of €48m (£38.7m).

30% of Rovio's revenues for the year came from its consumer products business, which includes merchandising and licensing income.

Rovio says that the total number of Angry Birds game downloads reached 648m by the end of 2011, with 200m monthly active users (MAUs) across all platforms.

As context for that figure, social games publisher Zynga had 21m MAUs at the end of March 2012, while also acquiring US developer OMGPOP, whose Draw Something mobile game currently has 33.9m MAUs. Meanwhile, in March developer Outfit7 said it had just over 100m MAUs for its suite of Talking Friends apps.

Rovio grew its headcount from 28 to 224 during the year, as it sought to capitalize on the popularity of Angry Birds by expanding into consumer products and animation.

"The strong growth in revenue clearly demonstrates the popularity of the Angry Birds brand," said chief executive Mikael Hed in a statement. "The heavy investments made in 2011 to all business areas will be seen in future products. To ensure continuous success we need to be creative and stay focused on entertaining our millions of fans by continuously developing new and innovative products and services."

Hed added that Rovio is "very optimistic" about continuing its growth in 2012. The company launched the latest Angry Birds game, Angry Birds Space, in March. It proceeded to rack up 50m downloads in the next 35 days.