Rovio wants a billion daily active users
Angry Birds maker Rovio's head Peter Vesterbacka stood up on stage in Helsinki last week, and told the assembled crowd that his company wants to eventually have a full 1 billion daily active users. Daily active users, or DAUs, is a measure used in tabulating mobile app success, and it's often a good indicator of just how engaged people are with a given app. Most smaller apps might claim a few hundred daily active users, and a very popular app might claim a few million. But Vesterbacka says Rovio wants a billion.
At that point, you're not talking about an app any more, you're talking about a brand that's competing with some of the most storied and historic brands in the world. "We want to be the first entertainment brand with 1 billion fans [using the game] every day, watching animations, using our services," said Vesterbacka. "People think of the one company people use daily, which is Coca-Cola, and that's just a soft drink. So it should be straightforward for us to get to 1 billion fans every day in the next two to three years."
Straightforward? Sure, whatever. Vesterbacka also said that China has overtaken the US in terms of most Angry Birds fans playing every day. And while Rovio has been testing the waters with releases outside of the Angry Birds brand lately, Vesterbacka says that's not necessary: "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." As popular as this game continues to be, that may in fact be true.
