Angry birds marketing case study

Respond to the following questions: (at least two-page paper).

1.Describe the channel of distribution for Angry Birds. Is it effective? Explain why or why not.

2.Who has the channel power in the distribution of online games? Make sure to look up the definition of "channel power" in the textbook before answering this question.

Read the following Chapter 14 Case: Microsoft Implies Distribution of Angry Birds on Windows Phone 7 Rovio Mobile is a leading independent developer of wireless games. The company has developed games for companies such as Electronic Arts, Nokia, Vivendi, NAMCO Bandai, and Mr. Goodliving/Real Networks. As a leading provider to platforms such as the iOS and Android, the company was not pleased when Microsoft included a screenshot of an Angry Birds icon in promotional material on the Windows Phone 7 website. According to Rovio, the two companies had not agreed that the Windows Phone 7 would be a distributor of the Angry Birds game. Rovio Mobile started in the early 2000s when three students at the Helsinki University of Technology participated in a mobile game development competition sponsored by Nokia and Hewlett Packard. The students won the competition with a real-time multiplayer game called King of the Cabbage World and started their own company called Relude. The first commercial real-time multiplayer mobile game in the world, King of the Cabbage World, was later sold to Digital Chocolate and renamed Mole War. After a round of angel investment in 2005, the company changed its name to Rovio Mobile. This was the beginning of the development of numerous successful games that gave the company a reputation for innovative game design. The company’s ability to create both two- and three-dimensional games meant that it could offer product for a variety of platforms, including Nokia’s N-Gage, Flash, and Apple’s iOS. Angry Birds was released in December 2009 for Apple’s iOS platform. It is a puzzle video game in which players use slingshots to launch birds with the intent of destroying pigs on the playing field. Angry Birds can be played on personal computers, gaming consoles, and touchscreen-based smartphones. Since its release, over six million copies of the smartphone game have been purchased from the iTunes Store, making it one of the top-selling paid applications. The Android version of Angry Birds was downloaded over two million times in the first weekend of its release, and Rovio is said to receive around $1 million in revenue per month from the advertising that appears in the Android version of the game. The popularity of the Angry Birds game is exemplified by the download reports and logged playing time. According to the company, there are more than one million hours of game time logged on the iOS version of the game. Other reports suggest that no other game even comes close to having the following that Angry Birds captures in the marketplace. The game’s success is attributed to a successful combination of addictive gaming, comical presentation, and low price. Launched in 2010 and developed by Microsoft, Windows Phone 7 is a re-branding of Windows Mobile and is targeted to the consumer marketplace instead of the business marketplace. As such, it competes with Android and Apple platforms. Nokia is a major partner with Windows Phone 7.