Angry Birds hits 140M downloads, poised for growth in China

Rovio‘s Angry Birds mobile game has been downloaded more than 140 million times since its release 16 months ago.

The game maker said it has seen a major surge from the 100 million units it reported in March, which means that the title is climbing higher in the ranks of the best-selling games of all time.

In March, Rovio released the Angry Birds Rio version of the game, with new levels and characters related to the animated film Rio.The game sells for 99 cents in Apple’s App Store, but the download number also includes free versions as well, so there isn’t a good way to tell how much the private company has generated from the title.

Peter Vesterbacka, head of Rovio, disclosed the new download number at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing. Angry Birds is now available on Android, Windows, and video game systems such as the PlayStation Network (if it actually comes back, that is). Vesterbacka said that Rovio wants to hit 100 million downloads in China this year alone. The title has competition from other popular apps such as the Talking Friends apps from Outfit7, which has also seen 100 million downloads.

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.