Angry Birds maker to tailor games in Chinese market

Finland’s Rovio will start tailoring its Angry Birds mobile games to the Chinese market with help from Beijing Kunlun as it aims to step up business in the world’s most populous country, it said on Thursday.

While Rovio has expanded the hugely successful Angry Birds brand into merchandising and licensing business, it has struggled to produce more hit games and recently cut about 110 jobs, representing 14 percent of its workforce. “Angry Birds has been downloaded close to half a billion times in China,” Rovio Chief Executive Pekka Rantala said. “China is a massively important market and the mobile games industry is growing at a very significant pace.” Chinese games company Kunlun’s share price has more than doubled since the business listed on the Shenzhen stock market last month. Earlier **reports** suggest that the heroes of the addictive mobile game dishing out revenge on evil pigs had landed in a classroom in Singapore to prep kindergarten children, the Angry Birds way. A giant indoor tree house takes centre stage in a classroom dotted with stuffed Angry Bird toys and matching wallpaper, while a large wall-mounted touch screen plays educational games. The preschool programme, aimed at children aged between three and six, is based on the Finnish National Curriculum, widely considered one of the world’s best education systems. With inputs from Reuters