As we consider the trends of the past 12 months and look forward to the next 12 months, we've asked the great and the good in the mobile gaming industry for their opinions.

Harry Holmwood is CEO of MAQL Europe - a subsidiary of Marvelous AQL, a Japanese developer and publisher of mobile, social and console games.

Pocket Gamer: What do you think was the most significant event for the mobile games industry in 2012?

Harry Holmwood: The moves taken by the new eastern giants - DeNA, GREE, Tencent etc - in starting to move into the west, with new offices, acquisitions and the first successful products being launched.

That, and the incredible boom and bust that was Draw Something's launch, acquisition and crash.

What was the most significant event for your company?

Opening our European office, signalling the start of Marvelous AQL's expansion into the western mobile market.

What was your favourite mobile game of the year?
Super Hexagon. It's not free-to-play, it could have been written 30 years ago, and it's one of the greatest games ever made.

What do you predict will be the most important trends in 2013?

The negative - an almighty crash of the currently unsustainable market. Hundreds of indie studios will, sadly, pull out of the business as their games disappear without trace and earn no revenues.

VC-fuelled companies overspending on user acquisition will slow down and, hopefully, that bubble will deflate a little. Fewer people employed in the industry by the end of 2013 than at the start of it.

The positive - games like Super Hexagon, The Room and Minecraft, and the success of Kickstarter, show that gamers are willing to pay, up front, for innovative games made with passion.

Although free-to-play will continue to grow, premium games aren't going to go away - and there are a lot of genres that work better without a 'monetization mechanic', and I hope they still thrive.

Free-to-play will move further away from the 'skinner boxes' that people are growing tired of, to more fulfilling experiences, like we see in Japan, and also on PC markets with products like League of Legends and World of Tanks.

A move toward genuine platform agnosticism for the first time in the industry's history - often talked about, but never quite achieved. Developers using Unity to bring games across multiple platforms easily, accessing the same cloud datasets so I can play in the same gameworld whenever, wherever I want.

Possibly, but I really, really hope not - the entire platform agnosticism thing falling apart, and mass panic, as some big company acquires Unity and nobody has their own tech any more.

Hundreds of trading card games being released in the west, of which only a handful will succeed.

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

Remember that games are supposed to be fun.

Start with the fun, something tactile and joyful to play with and work out how to make money from there. Not the other way around.
Thanks to Harry for his time.