Five years isn’t a bad run for a bunch of wingless birds.
On Dec. 10, 2009, Finnish game developer Rovio Entertainment released Angry Birds on Apple’s App Store. As you can see in the chart above from App Figures, it dominated Apple’s digital marketplace for years. Even today, it’s still the 28th top paid app in iTunes.
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- Angry Birds (Dec. 10, 2009)
- Angry Birds Seasons (Oct. 21, 2010)
- Angry Birds Rio (March 22, 2011)
- Angry Birds Space (March 22, 2012)
- Bad Piggies (Sept. 27, 2012)
- Angry Birds Star Wars (Nov. 8, 2012)
- Angry Birds Friends (May 2, 2013)
- Angry Birds Star Wars II (Sept. 19, 2013)
- Angry Birds Go! (Dec. 11, 2013)
- Angry Birds Epic (June 12, 2014)
- Angry Birds Stella (Sept. 4, 2014)
- Angry Birds Transformers (Oct. 15, 2014)
Still, it isn’t a perfect world at Rovio. The studio fired 110 employees earlier in the month. As you can also see in the chart above, interest in the brand is slowly declining. While the original Angry Birds continues to do well, it can’t compete with newer hits like Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga. Interest in recent Angry Birds spin-offs like Go!, Epic, and Transformers quickly dives off after release.
Of course, the Angry Birds brand is far from dead, and it is impressive for a mobile hit to still remain this relevant five years after its release, especially when you compare it to flash-in-the-pan success stories like Flappy Bird. Who knows, maybe Rovio will fly its way back to the top again.