The industry spend a lot of time banging on about piracy and the revenue lost from those non-sales. However, Rovio Mobile CEO Mikael Hed said at the Midem conference in Cannes that piracy presents opportunities.

“We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There is tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which is not officially licensed products,” said Hed. “We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy. Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day.”

“We took something from the music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans. We do that today: we talk about how many fans we have,” he said.  “If we lose that fanbase, our business is done, but if we can grow that fanbase, our business will grow.”

Source: The Guardian