Why a Finnish Gaming Company Is Worth $3 Billion

U.S. gamers may not give much thought to it, but of the five top-grossing games in the U.S. App Store today, four have been developed by two companies, the London-based King and the Helsinki-based Supercell. The latter has just attracted the biggest investment ever for a mobile application developer: $1.5 billion for a 51 percent stake from Japanese telecom giant SoftBank.

Supercell, now the highest valued mobile app company in the world, started out in May 2010 in a dingy Helsinki office filled with discarded furniture. In 2011, its revenue reached a mere $203,000. The following year, it made a profit of $40 million on sales of $105 million. In the first quarter of 2013, sales jumped to $178 million. All the money comes from two strategy games: Clash of Clans, featuring warfare, and Hay Day, focusing on farming.