Mobile engagement, UA and monetisation platform Metaps has been very successful in the dynamic Japanese Android game market.

And now it's looking to bring that success to the west.

It's recently hired Tim Jones, previously with Fiksu, to kickstart its business in Europe.

We asked him to explains what Metaps does and why he thinks European developers should be interested.

Pocket Gamer: For those readers who don't know, what is Metaps' role in the industry?

Tim Jones: Our role is to act as the partner of choice and to offer a gateway to Asia for western developers looking to succeed in the region.

You've fairly recently announced one billion downloads though your platform. That's a lot so what's your secret for success?

We know how to help developers succeed in Asia. We help our partners make a lot of money and reach the highest quality users, and with teams on the ground in every Asian territory our market knowledge is second to none.

For that reason, we have been able to forge partnerships with the highest quality partners, such as LINE, Kakao, King, Zynga, Social Point and Social Quantum.

Obviously the Japanese market, in particular, and Asian markets, in general, are different to western markets in terms of app distribution and user acquisition so why do you think you'll be successful internationally?

We are already helping our domestic partners succeed in Japanese and Asian markets, so helping international clients is the obvious next step for us.

We are also constantly releasing new products and refining existing products so we hope that many of these will be well-suited to meet the needs of western developers.

Historically Android has been runner-up in the west and there have been very few western companies that have focused on Android, but we have been focusing on Android for some time now because of its dominance in Asia.

And as Android markets continue to grow in Asia, and are starting to grow in the west, we think we have the knowledge and expertise to ensure success for our partners.

Personally, you've just moved to Metaps, so what excited you about the opportunity?

Metaps is already the market leader in Asia, so I see a real growth opportunity in acting as the gateway to what one of our clients described today as the 'hot' Asian market.

I look forward to building our presence throughout Europe.

What do you see as being the big trends in the latter half of 2014?

Programmatic and data-driven marketing will continue to make headway and our recent acquisition of AppDataBank will expand our data-driven services to keep up with those trends.

But I don't think that current best-practices are going to go away any time soon - which is probably a good thing for developers, because it means that their range of options for reaching new users and succeeding in new markets will just continue to expand.

You can find out more about Metaps services here