Think of an absolutely ludicrous number of game sales, then double it, and you have the number of times Angry Birds has been downloaded. Rovio general manager Andrew Stalbow claims that the game has topped 350 million downloads, and teased that it may soon become a broader "entertainment" franchise.

"People in Hollywood are really surprised with the quick acceleration in the way consumers engage with entertainment on their mobile phones," Stalbow told VentureBeat. "There will be some interesting entertainment partnerships that will hopefully take what we had from [Angry Birds Rio] to a totally different level."

And Rovio will be continuing to focus on Angry Birds for the foreseeable future, because, "it's turning into a big entertainment franchise." We can only guess what partnerships he's referring to, but my money is on a cartoon series starring the birds and their egg-eating rival pigs -- even if it is a tad morbid. Those are the birds' children, after all.

Earlier this year, Rovio secured $42 million in investor capital, and is now considering how to beef up the gameplay for console ports. It was also one of the first titles available for the recently-launched Google+ games.

Of course, these don't all constitute unique purchasers. Some people are bound to have gotten the game on more than one platform, or to have bought its seasonal variants. But to put the number in perspective, this means downloads of Angry Birds outnumber the entire population of the United States. So it's no wonder you see everybody playing it on the bus.