Angry Birds developer says Apple will be No. 1 for a long time

Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio Mobile's "Mighty Eagle," affirmed Apple's continued dominance during an interview with Tech N' Marketing earlier this week.

Since its release in December 2009, Rovio Mobile's "Angry Birds" iPhone game has become a global phenomenon. The game had a slow start, but eventually took off, reaching 50 million downloads across platforms. According to Vesterbacka, "Angry Birds" has remained at number one on Apple's App Store "longer than anybody else."

The game's characters have become so iconic that some Wall Street analysts have begun using the birds as a symbol for the burgeoning profitability of the mobile app market.

When asked how he viewed "the various mobile OSes in regard to the future of mobile technology," Vesterbacka replied, “Apple will be the number one platform for a long time from a developer perspective, they have gotten so many things right. And they know what they are doing and they call the shots."

Moving on to Android, Vesterbacka stated that Android's fragmentation problems are not a device issue, but an ecosystem one. "Android is growing, but it’s also growing complexity at the same time. Device fragmentation not the issue, but rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem," he said.

With many different shops, many different models and "the carriers messing with the experience again," Android is becoming chaotic for Vesterbacka, who called it "open, but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem."

In November, Rovio apologized for problems with the release of "Angry Birds" on Google's Android mobile OS. "Despite our efforts, we were unsuccessful in delivering optimal performance," the company said.

Rovio released the Android version of "Angry Birds" as a free ad-based app ealier this year, calling it "the Google way." According to Vesterbacka, "paid content just doesn’t work on Android."

During the interview, Vesterbacka agreed with recent comments from Apple CEO Steve Jobs about development difficulties on Android. "Steve is absolutely right when he says that there are more challenges for developers when working with Android," he said.

According to Vesterbacka, developers will eventually figure out how to work within the Android ecosystem, but "nobody else will be able to build what Apple has built, there just isn't that kind of market power out there."