VAASA, Finland – The two men who created ‘Milk the Cow’ and the ‘YouTube Downloader’ have reached 100 million downloads from the Nokia store.

For those unfamiliar, ‘Milk the Cow’ is just that – an app where you milk a cow until you fill a bucket (There are good sound effects too).

Pico Brothers, the company behind such simple, but ingenious, ideas have made their name from apps that provide short bursts of sheer entertainment.

If you haven’t already, try ‘Talking Hamster’ that repeats what you say in a squeaky voice, or ‘Cuckoo Clock’ that chimes every hour – like a cuckoo clock. It can be switched to silent at night. Pico Brothers old-timers will of course remember classics like the Cracked Screen app, and Flashlight Extreme.  

“We make the apps that people want to have,” says founder Niklas Karlström, “That’s given us momentum, and it’s snowballed.” 

He makes up the Pico Brothers team with co-founder Kristian Engsjö (and a dog called Viggo).

“We both still work from home, although I have a baby now so sometimes I go to an office to work in peace,” Karlström says. His dream for five years time is to “have fun and to do something that makes sense”. For ten years time it’s “to still have fun”.

After huge success on the Nokia Store, Pico Brothers are now developing apps for Windows Phone too: “As a starting point, we’re looking at getting about ten of our apps on the Windows Phone platform, including Talking Cat, some of our other entertainment apps and the anti-mosquito app.”

Karlström has a long relationship with Nokia, stretching back to his first phone: “It was a Nokia, of course, and I’ve always had a Nokia,” he says.

“Kristian and I were working in telecoms when we read about the opening of the Ovi Store, now the Nokia Store, in 2009. We knew we wanted to be on there, and make our name as one of the major players.”

The app that kept him awake at night was the YouTube Downloader: “When the Nokia N8 came along with HD video playback on a big screen TV, we knew that if we could pull off the YouTube Downloader it was going to be huge.”

The secret of success, according to Karlström, is dreaming up lots of creative ideas, only some of which come to successful fruition, “We have lots and lots of ideas, and some of those go as far as being published as apps.” Others don’t see the light of day.

With 100 million downloads from the Nokia Store, Pico Brothers “snowball” now has quite some momentum. 

video credit: Nokia Developer