In the early 2000s, arguably the smartest things about smartphones were the contact books and calendars. Peter Vesterbacka, then a business development executive at Hewlett-Packard in Finland, had a different vision. He saw the smartphone not just as a perfunctory work accessory but also as a powerful gaming platform. In 2003, wanting to expand HP’s mobile gaming offerings beyond standards like solitaire, he began a contest for the best multiplayer smartphone game; three Finnish college students won with a whack-a-mole-like game. The students went on to found a mobile gaming company, Rovio, near Helsinki.
Today Vesterbacka is Rovio’s chief marketing officer and the driving force behind the company’s blockbuster mobile game Angry Birds, in which players use a touch screen to slingshot vengeful birds at towers to destroy the egg-stealing pigs who live inside. The game’s brilliant graphics, coupled with its childlike simplicity, have helped make it the most popular mobile game in history. By the end of last year, it had been downloaded more than 500 million times.
