While the overwhelming success of Angry Birds is clear for all to see – the franchise having just passed the 500 million downloads mark – one stick with which commentators beat Rovio is the lack of a follow up.

Instead, Rovio has focused its attention on making its nest as big as possible and dropping many eggs into it.

To that extent, launching its own carrier billing model could prove to be a major cash cow in its own right.

Indeed, in an interview with Arctic Start Up, CMO Peter Vesterbacka suggested the aforementioned Bad Piggy Bank could be set to make a big splash in the US thanks to a deal with a 'large US-based operator'.

Piggy power

No company has been named by Rovio – though AT&T is mooted – but this move would represent a major step forward for the billing service, which recently made its first mark stateside thanks to a deal with T-Mobile on Android.

Thanks to a partnership with Estonian payments company Fortumo, the Rovio-branded solution allows customers to pay for mobile games without having to enter credit card details, instead adding the cost to their monthly mobile bill.

Much has been made of late of an attempt to sell this model to third parties – Rovio even raising the possibility of doing away with the traditional 70-30 revenue split propagated by most app stores – but concrete details have been few and far between.

[source: Arctic Start Up]