Angry Birds may determine the fate of Nokia

Yes yes, there’s a new Angry Birds game. (heavy sigh) They’re in space this time or something and NASA helped make the game or something and now it’s the top selling app everywhere. Blah blah blah, derp a  derp a doo. Look, Angry Birds is a good game, but it’s NOT THAT GOOD A GAME. And there’s the whole weird bird suicide angle, which everyone seems to be TOTALLY COOL WITH.

Whatevs.

But here’s the thing: Rovio, the company that makes Angry Birds, won’t make the game available on Windows Phones. And that lack of confidence or even interest in the Microsoft platform is leading to concerns about the fate of once-dominant Nokia, which is placing a large bet on the future of the company.

From Tech Crunch, discussing a research note sent out by analyst Richard Windsor::

Angry Birds (version 1) is already the number 1 on the Windows Phone App store, so if the most successful developer on the platform isn’t investing the time and money to put a new game on it, “it gives a strong indication that no one else will expect to be making money writing for this platform, either.”

And given that Nokia is banking its future on the success of the platform, that will mean problems for the handset maker, too:

“It’s early days, but Rovio’s lack of confidence in the platform may cause some to think twice about the likelihood of Nokia’s recovery in smartphones,” he writes.

I’ll confess, I used to be hooked on Angry Birds and then one day had an epiphany that it just doesn’t matter what birds and pigs are doing since I am neither a bird nor a pig. Felt better after that.