After Nokia’s sharp quarterly loss was posted, creators of Finland’s Angry Birds game announced downloads had hit 300 million.
Nokia’s loss was only its second since the company became the world leader in mobile phones in 1998. CEO Stephen Elop admitted the losses were even worse than expected with Apple’s domination across the smartphone sector having serious ramifications for other companies.
But Peter Vesterbacka, the chief marketing officer of Angry Birds creator Rovio, said the company was working on new Angry Birds experiences for the 120 million active users on mobile phones.
"We'll expose a bit more of the Angry Birds story," he said.
"Our goal is to be the first brand with a billion fans," he added. "What we are building is a next generation entertainment franchise.”
Rovio launched Angry Birds as an iPhone application in 2009 and it is now available on a host of other devices, including Android smartphones, the iPad, Sony PlayStation 3 consoles and even through Google's Chrome Web browser.
Angry Birds involves catapulting cartoonish birds into fortresses built by egg-stealing green pigs but Vesterbacka said Rovio is "not a games company."
On Tuesday Apple reported forecast-beating earnings while Sony Ericsson and HTC have also signaled strong smartphone demand, but many investors worry the economic troubles could hit phone sales.
Nokia CEO Elop has been pinning turnaround hopes on new smartphones using Microsoft software, but these will only come to market later this year.
Nokia's share price has halved since February - when it unveiled the shift to Microsoft - on worries the company will lose so much market share before the new phones come out that it might never recover its footing.
