Android App Spotlight #30: Angry Birds

Price: Free (!)
AppBrain
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The final version of Angry Birds was released today. Featuring 150 levels of pig-smashing goodness, Android gaming is taking its first steps towards legitimacy.

Several things are interesting about this release. First, the game is first released exclusively on the GetJar market, with promises of the Android Market and Motorola "SHOP4APPS" to come soon. This market fragmentation is only going to get worse as popularity for the platform and other people start curating their own app markets. Personally, I don't care, as I can just go and find it whether it's located in the GetJar market, or the Amazon Market, or the Best Buy Market, but I think it might be difficult for ordinary people to find what they're looking for across a dozen different marketplaces (until there's a market app that searches across all markets...).

Of course, since I started typing this entry, GetJar crashed under the demand for the game, and is now available in the Android Market, too.

Secondly, the full game is a free, ad-supported version - the only other free versions of the app is a demo on Apple's Market. It's interesting that Rovio, despite having the #1 best-selling paid app on the iPhone for weeks, decided to go the ad-supported route for Android. It's probably the better move, as current stats are showing that iPhone owners are much more likely to pay for apps than Android owners, but given the demand that crashed GetJar's servers, it's clear that there's a significant demand on our platform, too.

Whatever political implications arise from this release, the Android version of Angry Birds is just as good as that on other platforms, and at the low, low price of free, there's no reason for you to add this to your collection.