Aw arent they cute?
There probably isn’t much more to be said about the ridiculous success of the Angry Birds franchise that hasn’t already been said but while much of the attention has been on the success of the actual applications on iPhone, tablets and Android what has really comes a surprise is how popular the merchandise is. It is not just popular in the US/UK/Australia – I visited SE Asia recently (Malaysia and Singapore mainly) and Angry Birds merchandise and promotions are EVERYWHERE there. No matter where you go you will see posters, stickers, advertisements and cross-promotions. Even on the plane the in flight magazine on Air Asia had sponsorship deals promoting… you guessed it… Angry Birds. Of course a lot of this was tied in with Christmas – what self respecting parent wouldn’t buy their kids something from the hottest trend of the year?
It is little wonder that Rovio, then creator of Angry Birds is reporting revenue of $100 million for 2011, that’s 10x more than 2010. While of course the app sales will still be accounting for a good chunk of that income there is no doubt that massive increase is mostly due to merchandise sales, and I would not be surprised at all if a large amount of that comes from Asia. You can’t underestimate the power of tapping into a huge trend in Asian countries – consumers there notoriously love cutesy fluffy things (Hello Kitty anyone?) plus are huge consumers of electronics and massive video gamers – its like the perfect storm of cute merchandise opportunities. It is little wonder that Rovio themselves have claimed that they expect to sell 20 MILLION Angry Birds plush toys this Christmas alone… and apparently it would be higher than that if production capacity could keep up with demand. It is all adding up to a pretty big IPO as is expected to be announced in 2012 sometime.
Like all fads though you have to wonder how long it can last? Of course the company has new games in the works to keep things moving when interest in the Angry Birds games inevitably wanes but the real challenge will be creating something that even begins to live up to their original smash hit success. There is even a feature length movie planned, which will be interesting to see. Quite how they will make a movie out of a game that while fiendishly addicting is rather limited in complexity and story line remains to be seen.
Of course with all the success of the merchandise comes another problem- counterfeiters. Obviously China is the fastest in the world when it comes to churning out cheap knock-offs and they sure didnt disappoint this time – factories there are pumping out fake Angry Birds merchandise as fast as they can – apparently there is even a completely unauthorized Angry Birds theme park open to the public in China right now! There were even some big imports busted in the US prior to Christmas full of pirated goods. With anything successful there will always be the imitators. So where to next for Angry Birds in 2012 – will they move on past cute fluffy toys? That remains to be seen.