Angry Birds' Publisher Refusing Offers From Microsoft, Google
June 20, 2010
When the story came out saying that Microsoft may be offering cash to tempt popular iPhone app developers and publishers to create for their platform, it left us wondering who would take the offer. Thanks to the publisher of Angry Birds, we finally have some insight into how they will respond.
The San Francisco Chronicle recently interviewed Joe Wee, the director of mobile application publisher Chillingo. Chillingo has had six games which have reached #1 in the App Store. One of those titles, Angry Birds, has sold over 4 million copies. According to Joe Wee, he gets calls on a daily basis from both Microsoft and Google but so far he has turned them down. Why?
He's ignoring their requests for now because Apple iOS is the only "commercially viable" mobile platform for him.Chillingo is obviously having great success by targeting a low price and high volume market. With iOS they are looking at a potential customer base of 100M by 2011. With the costs related to porting the app over likely being high, publishers like Wee have to look at how many potential sales they could have on a second device. With the Android market share being significantly smaller than iOS, and Windows Phone 7 not even released, it's easy to see why a publisher focused on volume sales wouldn't be very interested. This means that if Microsoft and Google were offering cash incentives to lure developers and publishers, it would likely have to be at least enough to cover the development and support costs. While not everyone agrees with Wee, this news is not good for Microsoft and Google in the near term. It also shows how much momentum the iOS platform carries with the developer community.