As the year draws to an end, it's time to look back at what happened in the world of mobile gaming during 2009.

Equally, the lessons of history are useless without a future to demonstration what we've learnt, so as well as asking various notables about their view on the past 12 months, we're also getting them to look ahead to 2010.

You can see the full list of our end of year interviews here.

German studio Fishlabs has been at the forefront of mobile development since it was founded by Michael Schade and Christian Lohr in 2004.

With a particular focus on highend 3D graphics, something it’s continued to push on iPhone with games such as Rally Master Pro, it’s also branched out with successful free, ad funded games commissioned by the likes of Barclaycard and VW.

Pocket Gamer: What was the most significant event of 2009?

Michael Schade: There's no doubt that Apple has changed the whole mobile gaming industry with the iPhone and the App Store business model. But even more than this, it was amazing how Apple supported their developers at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

The level of technical feedback, including best practice and code samples, is unparalleled in the mobile industry. It was something you'd expected from a gaming console manufacturer. Hence, Apple has changed not only mobile but the gaming industry in general.

What was the most significant event for Fishlabs?

Without exaggerating, we light a candle for Apple every day. With our niche portfolio of unbranded high-end mobile games, if we had to rely solely on revenues from our Java games, we would be out of business.

Ironically though, thanks to the success of our titles on the iPhone and the new generation of smartphones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson, our heritage in mobile gaming has given us a competitive advantage based on our strong relationship with our friends in Sweden and Finland.

Last, but not least, thanks to the massive success of the iPhone as a gaming platform, ad gaming became a big chunk of our revenue with key accounts such as Volkswagen and Barclaycard.

What was your favourite mobile game of 2009?

There are many excellent games on the iPhone but my all-time favourite non-Fishlabs game is geoDefense.

It's an incredibly polished tower defence game. The gameplay is ideal for a mobile device, there are lots of challenging levels that require various tactics, and the retro-style neon graphics in combination with the ultra cool audio make me come back to it over and over again. It's definitively a title that's missing in our own portfolio.

Also worth mentioning is I Dig It. It has the same level of polishing and is also highly addictive thanks to its simple but intuitive gameplay.

What do you predict will be the most important trends in 2010?

This will be games for smartphones that are sold through app stores, even operator-driven ones. Apple has led the way and others will follow. Even if some OEMs have been slow on the uptake, it's obvious that smartphones offer a new level of gaming experience with OpenGL graphics on a big screen and high quality audio, and touch and tilt controls.

The gap between these devices and the average feature phones is just too big in terms of designing games that are compelling on Java and also take full advantage of smartphone capabilities.

When we brought our hero titles such as Galaxy on Fire and Rally Master Pro from Java to iPhone, it took us the same amount of time to adapt them to this new level as creating the original Java games. So we will design upcoming titles with iPhone specs in mind and tweak them accordingly for other smartphones, as not everyone in the world will have an iPhone in 2010.

If you could enforce one New Year's resolution, what would it be?

It is the same every year:

Regardless what store we're talking about, the download of paid content must be free. It's an absolute no-go that consumers still get charged twice on some operator and D2C portals.

Operators should join a mobile payment alliance to make one global mobile payment system available with affordable terms for content providers. I believe this would massively drive sales of mobile content and services.

Regardless which app store, a price point of 99c dilutes the perceived value of games. The minimum price point should be $2.99, if not $4.99. Then we will see better games and more revenue for games of all quality.

Thanks to Michael for his time.

You can keep up to date with what's going on at Fishlabs via its website and Twitter.