Rovio: We want to be the first entertainment brand with 1 billion DAUs

Plus, Vesterbacka answers the China question

Rovio has announced that China is now home to more daily active Angry Birds users than anywhere else in the world.

Proclaiming that the firm is "very happy" with its business in the world's second largest economy, 'Mighty Eagle' Pete Vesterbacka took to the stage at the Slush conference in Helsinki to talk up Rovio's Chinese operations.

"It's the biggest market for smartphones and where we have the most daily active users," he stated.

"It recently overtook the US in daily usage."

Just a drink

Vesterbacka also discussed Rovio's future, reiterating the company's intention to generate more than half of its revenue from physical goods and explaining Rovio's desire to surpass 1 billion daily active users.

"We announced 30 million DAU at one point, but that was ages ago," Vesterbacka explained.

"We want to be the first entertainment brand with one billion fans [using the game] every day, watching animations, using our services.

"People think of the one company people use day, which is Coca Cola, and that's just a soft drink. So it should be straight-forward for us to get to one billion fans every day in the next 2 to 3 years."

IPO-no-no

Finally, when asked about the possibility of a Rovio IPO, Vesterbacka replied: "The press likes to speculate about IPOs and acquisitions. We don’t worry about that too much.

"We are profitable and can fund our own growth. We want to make Angry Birds as big as it can be and very much a part of pop culture. We don't need to do anything else."

His fellow panellist, Rovio co-founder Niklas Hed, was less certain, however. "We'd do an IPO if it makes sense," he said.

[source: TechCrunch]

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