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Rovio has big plans for China, which is now the world’s largest smartphone market. In an interview to Mobile World Live, the company’s general manager for China, Paul Chen, said: “We’ve got big plans in building up the team and expanding our business overall as it relates to our games, our entertainment and our consumer products.”
As part of the deal, Rovio will open two Angry Birds retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai with “several hundred” more planned for the next 12 to 18 months. Moreover, the first official Angry Birds activity park (as opposed to the fake one) is due to open near Shanghai in October with many more due to follow.
Rovio has already launched Chinese Moon Festival and Year of the Dragon levels for its Angry Birds Seasons game as part of its plan to take “Chinese culture and introduced it to tens of millions of people outside China.”
The Angry Birds maker only opened its Chinese office at the beginning of 2012 but is now keen to take advantage of the country’s huge growth potential. Chen also acknowledged challenges of operating in the world’s most populous country, including app piracy, the fragmentation of app stores and different monetization models, adding that the introduction of low-cost devices is giving it access to a whole group of consumers that have never played Angry Birds before…
You can watch the whole interview with Paul Chen at Mobile World Live.
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
