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.

New York publisher Freeverse was one of the first game companies to support iPhone, thanks to its long history as a Mac developer. It published the million-selling Flick Fishing in 2008 (developed by Strange Flavour), updating it to make it one of the first iPhone games to support in-app purchases in June 2009.

Other successes in the year included the inhouse developed Top Gun (for Paramount), and US paid #1 Skee-Ball, which was developed by Graveck.

Its answers are a joint effort, courtesy of designer Justin Fic (pictured) and marketing director Lydia Heitman.

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

Without a doubt, it was the dual launch of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone OS 3.0 over the summer.

The 3GS brought new, speedy, powerful hardware and the support for shaders in our OpenGL code. The iPhone OS 3.0 gave us the ability to support peer-to-peer networking, play songs from your iPod library, and sell downloadable content from within our games, among many other things.

Both of these expanded what is possible for us to do as game developers.

What was the most significant event for Freeverse?

We got a great write-up on the front page of the New York Times business section at the start of December in an article entitled Apple’s Game Changer, Downloading Now.

What was your favourite mobile game of 2009?

There are so many good titles, it's impossible to choose one.

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

I believe we’ll start seeing a trend with companies trying to figure out ways to promote their games that’s as effective as the Top Apps list in the App Store.

With over 112,000 apps at time of writing - and with this total easily reaching 125,000 by the time the ball drops - simply seeing the best-selling 100 games will not be enough for companies trying to make a living, and also not enough for new players trying to find the best games: those diamonds in a vastly expanding rough.

The companies that carve out a place for themselves without relying on the frequently-changing Top 100 list will be the ones most likely to be celebrating when you write this column again in 2011.

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

To always put the player first and to continue to make games that kick ass. Try to learn from one another's apps and push the limits of mobile gaming!

Thanks to Justin and Lydia for their time.

You can keep up-to-date with Freeverse via web and Twitter.