Angry Birds | Finland Australia Chamber of Commerce Inc

The birds have become an international brand.

Rovio Entertainment, the maker of Angry Birds which has now been downloaded over 1.7 billion times, is launching a cartoon series this weekend.
Angry Birds Toons will be viewable through video-on-demand services, smart TVs and select TV networks around the world.

The animated shorts will also be available from a dedicated video distribution channel launching across all of the Angry Bird game titles on smartphones and tablets.

To watch the series through this channel, fans simply need to download the latest update for any Angry Birds game, which will unlock the new channel button on the homescreen.

— With over 1.7 billion downloads, we can reach a far wider and more engaged global audience than traditional distribution would allow, said Rovio CEO Mikael Hed.

— Launching the channel, and partnering up with some of the best video-on-demand providers and TV networks, is an important milestone for us on our journey towards becoming a fully-fledged entertainment powerhouse.

The series, which was first announced last April, will comprise 52 episodes, released at the rate of one a week from March 16 on TV, and March 17 in all Angry Birds apps and video-on-demand platforms.

Comcast will carry the channel on its video-on-demand services in the US, as will Samsung’s range of connected TVs globally, with Roku set-top boxes to follow.

Networks in Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, India, Finland, Israel, France, Germany, Norway, Chile and Brazil have signed on to air the cartoons.

www.rovio.com

News courtesy of Good News Finland/Finnfacts

Juha Laakkonen, Lappset’s CEO, was recently interviewed for a Wall Street Journal article illustrating the growth of Rovio’s Angry Birds brand and the companies that have become attached to the brand through various licensing opportunities.

Lappset was one of the more highlighted companies discussed in the article, with a picture of the Angry Birds Land at Särkänniemi Adventure Park in Tampere, Finland being used as the article’s main image.

The article mentions Lappset’s 20% increase in sales since the start of the venture, as well as Laakkonen’s positive attitude towards the European economic situation by saying, “You can’t just sit and wait for the situation in Europe to improve. You have to do something.”

The Wall Street Journal is the largest newspaper in the United States, by circulation, with approximately 2.3 million subscriptions of which approximately 800,000 are paid digital editions.

(Source: AP)

For the full WSJ article, please click here.

Rovio launches Angry Birds cartoon series

Lappset CEO interviewed by Wall Street Journal