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Angry Birds maker to tailor games in Chinese market

File photo of an employee as she works inside an office of Rovio, the company which created the video game Angry Birds, in Shanghai June 20, 2012. REUTERS/Aly Song

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's Rovio will start tailoring its Angry Birds mobile games to the Chinese market with help from Beijing Kunlun as it aims to step up business in the world's most populous country, it said on Thursday. While Rovio has expanded the hugely successful Angry Birds brand into merchandising and licensing business, it has struggled to produce more hit games and recently cut about 110 jobs, representing 14 percent of its workforce. "Angry Birds has been downloaded close to half a billion times in China," Rovio Chief Executive Pekka Rantala said. "China is a massively important market and the mobile games industry is growing at a very significant pace." Chinese games company Kunlun's share price has more than doubled since the business listed on the Shenzhen stock market last month. (Reporting By Jussi Rosendahl; Editing by Liisa Tuhkanen)