Angry Birds-Maker Rovio Crossed 263M Monthly Active Users Last Month

Rovio, the Finnish makers of Angry Birds, said they crossed 263 million monthly active users in December, with 30 million downloads in Christmas week alone and 8 million downloads on Christmas Day. The figure is about 30 percent higher than the 200 million monthly active users the company had at the end of 2011.

For perspective, 263 million monthly actives is nearly as many as Zynga has. Zynga reported 311 million monthly active users in the third quarter of last year, and tracking site AppData says that the company currently has 264 million monthly active users on Facebook.

Rovio, which found its landmark hit on the iOS platform on its 52nd attempt at launching a game, has set increasingly lofty (and some say, crazy) goals year after year. At an interview I did with the company in November, the company’s chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka said he wanted Rovio to be the first entertainment brand with 1 billion a users a day (or as many as Coca-Cola interacts with).

The path to that involves not just smartphone games, but loads of licensed merchandise, animated shorts, a feature length film, and potentially hundreds of activity and amusement parks in China and throughout the world. China recently became Rovio’s biggest market by daily active users.

The company expects that around half or more of its revenue will eventually come from real-world goods (not virtual ones).