As in previous years, Glu Mobile continued to generate plenty of news during 2011.

For one thing, as a publicly-owned company, it has to release its financials figures every three months.

More interesting, however, is the supplementary data the company releases as it demonstrates how it's engaging with the growing freemium market, especially on Android.

Significantly, it also doubled its development headcount, buying two Blammo Games and Griptonite Games in August. 

We caught up with veep of sales and marketing Mike DeLaet to get his take on the past 12 months.

PocketGamer: What do you think was the most significant event for the mobile games industry in 2011?

Mike DeLaet: We believe the addition of in-app purchases for Android Market, along with carrier billing for several additional carriers, have finally leveled the playing field between iOS and Android.

The Android ecosystem has also grown faster than anyone could have predicted, which bodes well for Glu as a company given our strategic relationship with Google and that we are the #1 publisher on Android Market.

What was the most significant event for Glu?

Glu is now nearly 24 months into our transition into freemium and we have grabbed a stake hold on the action/adventure genre with the highest production values on mobile.

That tied with freemium game mechanics have allowed Glu to grow dramatically in terms of smartphone revenues during 2011.

What was your favourite mobile game of the year?

My personal favorites from Glu would include Blood & Glory and Stardom: The A-List. Both were unique in their own right and proved once again that Glu can build very high quality action/adventure and casual products given our console DNA.

I think it would be fair to say that one third party title that probably caught us all off guard by its success would have to be Tiny Tower.

What do you predict will be the most important trends in 2012?

We feel that Android will continue to grow and surpass iOS in terms of smartphone revenue in 2012.

Windows Phone will start to become a player in what's now a three horse race, and by 2013, it should be starting to catch up to where Android was in late 2010.

What's your New Year's resolution and what resolution would you enforce on the industry?

Our goal is to become profitable in early 2013. Something we would like to see in the industry as a whole is faster smartphone adoption in emerging markets such as the APAC, EMEA and LATAM regions.

Thanks to Mike for his time.