The first panel talk of Mobile Games Forum 2010 concerned the growth of app stores and new distribution models.

Here's the dialogue flow as chairman Tim Harrison, ex-EA Mobile asked various questions...

Luca Pagano, veep, European Publishing, EA Mobile

We are very bullish about the future of mobile gaming because of the growth of smartphone and app stores. We had incredible growth almost beyond our expectations during 2009.

Smartphones get people to play and buy more games. There are still challenges though. Apple and iPhone dominate the market because the App Store got three things right - discovery, billing and experience. No other market place has yet done this, but we feel it's our duty to help get them to that situation.

Jean-Luc Ottensen, head of games and applications, Orange France

In the summer, we'll have a two million iPhone users on Orange so we can't ignore them, but we have huge traffic from our portal too. We're going to be deploying our own application shop via On-Device Portal (ODP) so our customers will have one-click purchase within this store and the ability to launch apps with this ODP.

EA, Glu and Gameloft, we can deal with direct but it's harder for us to deal with smaller companies so we are building a way that they can distribute their content within our store but it's not an open market. There are 100,000 apps on the App Store and there's not enough money for everyone so we will have a selection of high quality apps for our consumers that will we select.

Patrick Mork, veep, marketing, GetJar

For GetJar, it's all about consumer choice. If you want to be successful, you have to let consumers vote with their downloads.

At GetJar, we've tightened our policy in terms of what we allow over the past year especially in terms of working with companies such as EA and dealing with IP rights. But even on the Apple App Store, some apps are off limits. You can't sell new browsers for iPhone for example, but at GetJar, we offer 5 or 6 different browsers which appeal to different audiences.

Last year we did 500 million downloads. That's why for us, open is the preferred route. That's the approach Android is taking too.

Eric Pfeifer, global director, content and distribution, Handmark

We test all content that comes through our doors, which is something that open markets can't do. We have to deal with our partners and their support costs. If a game or app doesn't work, it's an additional cost for them so we're more focused on the quality side.

Also, we work with a core group of developers that we want to help make money rather than spread it across everyone.

Thomas Richter, former veep, mobile entertainment Fox, now a consultant

The direct consumer model isn't shaken by app stores though. People didn't buy Crazy Frog because they thought about it. It was an impulse purchase.

Having 100,000 apps on the App Store isn't the conclusive answer. You need something between developers and the consumer to manage content. There is value-ad for the consumer and profit for companies operating in that space

Armin Hummel, head, EMEA sales, mobile games, Real Networks

I think there are improvements to be made even for Apple's App Store. At Real, we want to provide a quality product for the consumer wherever they want it, although whether we can cover all of the app stores is unclear.

Luca Pagano: We're not seeing price erosion. For smaller developers on the App Store, price is important in terms of driving visibility in terms of chart position but it's also important for the whole of the industry that developers can maintain their prices, especially when you're dealing with licences

Jean-Luc Ottensen: A few years ago, we had a trial with free games in our portal and people said that these aren't good games because they are free. I think there is a relationship between price and perceived quality.

Patrick Mork: I think billing will be the litchpin to drive future growth. GetJar will be including billing in the UK and US this year.

Some of the biggest growing markets for us are India and South Africa where there's a tremendous amount of downloads but these are pre-paid markets and these people are not going to be buying apps, or if they are it will be cents. But Facebook, which is a free app, has created a billion dollar industry, in which companies such as Zynga are rumoured to be making $50 million per month. We haven't seen that on iPhone.

Mobile gaming has to enable free games and drive virtual goods sales. Free isn't about giving stuff away and not making money. Developers can make money out of free.

Luca Pagano: At EA, we are looking at micro-transactions and freemium although I can't say more about this yet. Facebook gaming has been revolutionary but with online, people are used to pay for content. Also with Facebook, you can reach an audience of millions that you can't yet reach on iPhone and that means the numbers don't add up yet.

We are seeing numbers for virtual goods in terms of games like Rock Band but it's going to take time until it's the main revenue for us.

Eric Pfeifer: Handmark has billing with most of the US carriers and consumers can use PayPal, Google, credit cards etc. In terms of in-app purchases, we've been doing subscription for years and there's a lot of money to be made there, but there's not a common solution across all platforms so better billing is definitely going to be needed in future.

Luca Pagano: Two years ago, to be successful in mobile games, all you needed was good relationships with the operators but now it's much more fragmented.

For consumer it's much more like a PC experience so people aren't going to operator portals but you need to follow those consumers where they go and your games can be discovered anywhere so going direct to consumer is an important part of our strategy going forward.

Patrick Mork: Carriers are realising they are good at offering handsets, integrating with mobile broadband and wireless, and doing billing and support. But actively managing content isn't always what they are good at so a number of carriers and OEMs (for example Sony Ericsson with its PlayArena portal) are coming to us to help in that area.