Rovio revenue estimate 2014

Is there a correlation between Rovio's revenue and the amount of Google searches for their most popular title Angry Birds? Admittedly, we only have three data points to go on, but they do line up nicely. The upper chart plots the log change in search volume (x-axis) against revenue (y-axis). Based on that correlation, Rovio's revenue should decline somewhat in 2014, to 152 million €.

Supercell revenue 2014 is 1.55 billion €, compared to forecasted 1.7 billion €

How powerful is Google Trends for predicting revenue of Internet compaines? This is just one data point, but my previous prediction for Supercell's 2014 revenue was not far off.

Supercell's revenue for 2014 was 1.55 billion €, compared to my prediction of 1.7 billion €.



The next prediction I have my eye on is for the Apple Watch. Google Trends data suggests that the Apple Watch will sell well below what market analysts expect. While the launch of the Apple Watch did create some buzz on search engines, that quickly died out.

Another mobile games company from Finland is Rovio. If would be interesting to see if the correlation holds up for them as well. It's not looking good.

Apple Watch sales prediction based on Google Trends data

Back in September 2014, I estimated that the unit sales of the Apple Watch will be 2700 000 in the first three months of sales. The number is based on the correlation between Google searches around the announcement for the iPhone and iPad. Later on in October I revised the number down to 400 000 based on low interest for the product.

When compared to the interest in the iPhone and iPad, the Apple Watch is still lagging behind. In fact, the iPod generates more Google Searches than the Apple Watch.

Industry analysts expect Apple to sell between 10-30 million watches in the first year, or 4-7.5 million per quarter. Even if 400 000 is way too low, the low search interest for the watch indicates that sales will be lower than what analysts predict.

Google Trends data is always two days behind, so we will have to wait until Wednesday to see how the Apple Watch launch compares to the iPad and iPhone. So far, it doesn't look great.

More on the methodology

TransferWise's hockey stick growth according to Google Trends

To get a free transfer from TransferWise, use this link.

Finland's most connected companies

How are the decision makers of listed companies in Finland connected? Using R for collecting decision maker data and D3 for visualizing the results, I have created this network chart (sorry for the ugly iframe):


Connections are the number of connections to other boards from one company to other. KONE's board members are for instance on 13 other boards. The most connected companies on Helsinki's stock exchange are Kone, Sponda and Teleste.

Company	Connections
KONE Oyj	13
Sponda Oyj	12
Teleste Oyj	10
Outotec Oyj	10
Cargotec Oyj	10

The data has been filtered out so that only companies with at least one connection to another company are included. The data is collected from finder.fi and includes the company's management, board members, and other people with the right to sign for the company.

Network chart of board members in Helsinki

The data is scraped from the Finnish business directory finder.fi. The network chart is created using D3.js.

Supercell revenue estimate 2014

I've previously used Google Trends to estimate revenues, and I will give it another go here for the Finnish gaming company Supercell. I've gathered the combined search volume for Hay Day, Clash of Clans, and Boom Beach.

Based on the search volume, the new game Boom Beach has not yet exceeded the interest in Supercell's first game Hay Day, and is still a long way off from matching the success of Clash of Clans. The trend is however positive. The interest in Clash of Clans has continued increasing.

The total search volume for all three games has increase 330 % as compared to 2013. Based on the past correlation between revenue and search volume, I estimate Supercell's revenue to be 1.7 billions 2014.




The graph above plots the weekly search volume index summed by year against the official yearly revenue figures. The green dot represents the estimate for 2014.