Biz Daily: Why is Rovio cutting up to 260 jobs?

hello welcome to is daily I'm John Jordan so we can use today is rovio so the crater of Angry Birds has announced pretty substantial package of redundant is so we're not exactly sure how we kind of stopped at the moment but it's saying it's preparing for 260 staff redundancies which could be about fifty percent of its of its staff so pretty significant so just kind of go back a bit in time see why why how r 0 y 0 is kind of comforting situation obviously angry birds is the bedrock of its kind of business and obviously from 2009 2010 11 12 in even 13 really Rovio was in a

massive growth phase and so angry birds are just doing brilliantly the game side and more important than merchandising side so while the games have kind of been the I guess the kind of cultural bedrock of how royo has grown its really been come 2010 2013 kind of merchandising so we've seen everywhere Angry Birds kind of merchandising pillowcases you know t-shirts food playgrounds of just enormous amount of socializing has been happening in Edwards and that kind of drove a lot of it financially a lot of Rovio's growth so in 2013 emotion izing this forty seven percent of his turnover this turnover was let me check the figures I was 10 / then was 156 million euros so kind of getting over two hundred billion dollars and basically what's happened is

that from 2000-2013 was the high point of the rovio sales 2014 saw declined not message declined over also sells with down nine percent overall um but interestingly games were actually the games revenue is up sixteen percent so games were games 2014 were seventy percent of turnover merchandising eat my lap when shrunk to a percent and what we see now is just it's basically the outcome of this kind of goodies are perfectly just a hard restructuring Rovio's business which grew very big at one point it was about a hundred people offices all over the world this comes the same or when you've got a massive merchandising operation that you can sustain so when you're kinda hell out hello kitty or something like that um you know you just know that that's a billion-dollar industry and they know that here on you hope for angry birds because it was so new there's big explosion in the phenomenon really of angry versus a buzzard as a cutter as a kind of brand particular level breath but for children and that kind of bubbled and now

sustained down since probably yeah I'm so that's two little generating tens of means of dollars a year from mangle those merchandising but it's just not that big and public business it was so obviously on the motion us in silence Rovio is going to have to lose not people there it's interesting that it still got a big um and got a net animated movie come out next year so they they've come made it clear that look people who making that movie clearly not really sacked probably do after the movie because related by a animation studio and produces a lot of bits toonz animation videos as well so whether how important eyes to long-term future that have completely don't really know but clearly the CI a--'s said the spotless restructuring that rovio just did too much there's too many operations ahead they're going to refocus it back so particular with games it's kind of work but we'd like to see I suppose and games are a good way of making money and the good companies you shouldn't need that many staff certainly game developers do not have 800 staff or very few do and and you know a row v 0 of 2

300 people it's probably much more saleable much more profitable their office is very hard for the people who are going to lose their jobs my guess the one kind of small companies in Finland where most and probably would be very very good severance packages and the finish games industry is very strong but lots of people are hiring so hopefully a number of those people will be able to be picked up by local developers and already there's coverage like next games and seriously basically could have had people who use for other rodents by that over the last couple years so there's a good better off above startups with roving experience people from Rovio so hope you've that Willie know in the long run years time we look back and go this was the right move Rovio's very nice at the time but it made them a stronger company of these companies can't keep going right there they're not well-run not being as profitable as they could be or basically become loss-making go bust never lose their jobs so in the long run it's probably a pretty good move until you're seen with everybody to the games come out it's done put it back well I

think that's 30 million downloads and probably up to you a lot more now it's kind of isn't I think kind of public perception drove is lagging a little bit I'm kind of quite bullish on earthing the angry birds game so they kind of understood free to play now it's still very strong brand globally so I think left to wait until her 2015 franchise come out which would be a while yet but I think we'll see a rebound of rovio and they've kinda hard a lot of smart people within the last kind of a kind of year six months in particular so so I think in the future there a good time to head for OVO just them some pain to go through in the meantime okay well hopefully come back with some happy news tomorrow come back then and see what's been going on in the world of mobile games see you then