Dec 28, 2010 15:27 GMT  ·  By

Undoubtedly, Angry Birds

was one of the smashing hits on the Android platform for the still ongoing year, with millions of downloads registered during the first few days of availability, and with a steady growth ever since.

However, the mobile game is not available only on Google's mobile operating system, but on other platforms as well, including the Apple iOS, or HP's webOS.

In a recent interview with technmarketing, Peter Verterbacka, the “Mighty Eagle” of Rovio, developer of Angry Birds, provided some insights into what each platform means for app building.

While Apple's iPhone remains the king of the hill, and the huge success it enjoys is a certain proof of that, Google's Android platform is keeping up the pace, and even speeding up, it seems.

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,” Peter Verterbacka stated.

“So many different shops, so many different models. The carriers messing with the experience again. Open but not really open, a very Google centric ecosystem. And paid content just doesn’t work on Android.”

Since many have complained about the fragmentation that plagues the Android platform, it comes as a surprise that Rovio does not see this as a problem, especially since they announced plans to release another flavor of the game, a lightweight one, to go with lower spec'd devices.

Even so, he does admit that developers face more challenges when it comes to building apps for the Android platform than for other OSes out there, in line with what Apple's Steve Jobs has been claiming.

“Fragmentation on the device side is not a huge problem, but Steve is absolutely right when he says that there are more challenges for developers when working with Android.

“But that’s fine, developers will figure out how to work any given ecosystem and as long as it doesn’t cause physical pain, it’s OK. Nobody else will be able to build what Apple has built, there just isn’t that kind of market power out there.”

However, one should take into consideration the fact that Apple and Google have to different business models here, and that this does not make one approach superior compared to the other.

The impressive success the Angry Birds had on Google's Android platform has determined Rovio to go for a ad-based approach when releasing the game, so as to make it free for download, unlike the iOS version, which is paid.

“Free is the way to go with Android. Nobody has been successful selling content on Android. We will offer a way to remove the ads by paying for the app, but we don’t expect that to be a huge revenue stream,” Verterbacka stated.