Product Life Cycle

A new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction, growth, maturity and decline. This sequence is known as the product lifecycle and is associated with change in the marketing situation, thus impacting the marketing strategy and marketing mix.

Since the app industry itself is fairly new, there have been several gaming apps that have been introduced, gained immense popularity and died down. This is known as a fad. Angry Birds, initially thought of as a fad, has established itself as a much longer lasting product and can be seen as being in the Maturity stage of its life cycle.

Angry Birds was introduced three years ago. In the introduction stage there was a free or lite version of the app available to make users familiar with the features of the game. Within a few weeks of release, due to promotion on various game review sites, the app became immensely popular and its sales kept rising. This was the growth stage. Rovio would release new levels of the game to add to the original game and sales went through the roof. Currently, due to the stiff competition from other games and the large variety of games available to customers, the sales have plateaued. Thus Angry Birds is currently in the Maturity stage of its life cycle. There is no other gaming app that has been around for as long as Angry Birds has with its level of popularity therefore it is difficult to predict when this product will go into the decline stage. It could take months or even years, depending on the ability of Rovio to keep adding new features and keeping the game as engaging.