
The main reasons for Finland’s success were Supercell’s games Clash of Clans and Hay Day. Pictured is Supercell’s CEO Ilkka Paananen. ((c) Petri Artturi / Team Finland / Finland Promotion Board)
Helsinki is the most prolific source of successful mobile apps after Silicon Valley. This was revealed by the British think tank Caribou Digital’s and Mozilla’s report on the global business surrounding mobile phone apps.
The Winners and Losers in the Global App Economy 2016 report’s researchers assessed which cities create successful mobile apps, reports the Finnish business magazine Talouselämä.
The researchers defined success by selecting developers whose products rate among the 500 best apps in various app stores. In addition to Silicon Valley and Helsinki, Hong Kong, Gurgaon, India and Taipei, Taiwan reached the top five.
Overall, Finland did better than could be deduced simply from the number of developers. Finland’s success is mainly the result of the lucrative games Clash of Clans and Hay Day developed by the company Supercell.
According to Talouselämä, the disproportionately large weight held by a single developer is not unusual, however. For example, Sweden’s result would be half of what it is now if the music service Spotify were to be discounted and the UK’s would fall from seven to two per cent if the creator of Candy Crash, King.com, were left out.

Finland did surprisingly well despite its low number of developers. ((c) Caribou Digital / Mozilla)
Article first published in Good News From Finland.