Luca Pagano joined EA Mobile as its European boss last September, joining from mobile content firm Buongiorno. ME sat down with him at the recent Mobile Games Forum in London to talk about EA Mobile’s strategy and view of the market.

You could say he’s feeling bullish. “Games is a big industry and growing – it’s the biggest entertainment industry - and I’m more and more convinced that mobile will be the gaming platform of choice for consumers worldwide,” says Pagano.

“This is what’s going to take gaming mainstream, and in the world of smartphones, EA is dominating. We have four of the top five grossing apps in the [iPhone] App Store, for example. The size of the opportunity we have is phenomenal.”

EA has certainly grasped the iPhone opportunity, bringing many of its big console franchises to the App Store, while also sticking to its guns on pricing, selling its key games for £5.99 ($9.99 in the US).

It’s certainly not alone – its fierce rival from the Java space, Gameloft, is investing just as much in iPhone, while console publishers like Activision are moving into the space too.

Pagano says that the App Store is evolving to be a more friendly environment for games with recognisable brands, and higher quality. He also highlights EA’s “good symbiotic relationship” with Apple: “They have done something amazing for our industry and our business, and we are also very important for them, taking these great quality games to iPhone and iPod touch.”

However, he also thinks that consolidation in the iPhone games space may open up opportunities for EA to work with more independent developers.

“There is likely to be a natural evolution where people may decide to take different avenues when it comes to publishing their games,” he says. “We definitely see this as an opportunity. There is a lot of rubbish on the App Store, but also a lot of great stuff that has come out of opening it up.”

EA Mobile is still, of course, the biggest publisher in the Java gaming market – certainly in the Western world anyway. Is the company still committed to J2ME and the operator portals, given its excitement at the opportunity provided by iPhone and other smartphones?

“There is still good money to be made in Java,” says Pagano. “In these particular market conditions, EA is in a very privileged position. We are effectively consolidating this market, and are in a position to leverage our scale and resources. So you will see more deals like the ones we have with Taito, Namco and Eidos, where it’s no longer viable for some publishers to maintain that [J2ME] business.”

So how about non-iPhone smartphones – platforms like Android, BlackBerry and Symbian? On the one hand, EA has been early into all of these platforms, but it’s equally fair to say that it’s taken a relatively cautious approach, preferring to port its J2ME games rather than invest iPhone-esque sums in richer titles.

Pagano says EA is fully behind Apple’s rivals though. “It is our hope – and in a way our responsibility – to make sure these smartphone platforms and marketplaces become a success,” he says.

“It’s where our business in the future will drive from, so we are ready to capture the opportunity when it arrives. With Apple, we were there from the beginning, to capitalise on this gigantic wave. We shifted quickly a lot of our resources, which is a testament to the flexibility of the organisation.”

In other words, EA is poised to do the same thing for Android, BlackBerry and other platforms, although the obvious implication is that it won’t swing its resources fully behind them until it deems the time is right.

“It’s not completely perfect out there in terms of people being able to create exactly the same conditions that Apple has done,” says Pagano. “The challenges have been widely discussed. Billing is one of the key ones. But we are looking forward to those challenges being properly tackled, and working together with Nokia, Google, RIM and the others.”

What about the mobile operators though? Pagano has already talked about the “good money” to be made in Java, but does he see the operators having a more prominent role again in smartphone gaming?

Pagano says he thinks it’s always dangerous to talk about the operators as a single group with “a very clear and defined approach” – pointing out that their strategies can vary even within individual operator groups, according to territory.

“Is there a big role for operators to play in this market? Absolutely, yes. At the very least, they can make a big difference by acting as the billing provider for those [smartphone] marketplaces. But we tend to talk about the operators as one entity, but even within the same group you will find very diverging views of the market.”

ME is interested in EA’s approach to cross-platform gaming, and how it relates to mobile. When the publisher first got into the space years ago, there was talk of linking mobile games up to console games – FIFA players building up their team’s skills in a mobile game then uploading the data back to their console, and so on.

It’s never quite happened – for any publisher, not just EA – although EA Mobile made the best stab at it yet last year, with a feature in its last Tiger Woods mobile game to unlock a stat boost in the console version. However, it seems that the real synergy may be in marketing, rather than gameplay features.

“When we took FIFA to the iPhone, it was pretty much day and date with the console launch, which shows one of the big advantages we have,” says Pagano.

“But in terms of cross-platform, there are technical barriers in the way of a compelling user experience. We can spend a lot of time, effort and money coming up with clever ideas – like we did with Tiger Woods – but at the end of the day, does it really add value to users? If it doesn’t, or if we’re not convinced, we’ll probably keep experimenting...”

What about Facebook though? EA bought social games firm Playfish last year, and ME wonders what impact that acquisition may have on EA Mobile. On the one hand, Playfish boss Kristian Segerstrale and his team have deep mobile gaming experience from their days at Glu.

On the other, they’ve shown little inclination as yet to dive back into the mobile world, releasing a single game – Who Has The Biggest Brain? – for iPhone and Android. Now it’s under EA’s roof, could Playfish do more in mobile?

“It gives us an incredible competitive edge,” says Pagano. “It gives us that phenomenal understanding of the freemium model. We’re thinking about how we can leverage some of their titles, but at the moment it’s too early for us to talk specifically.”

In other words, the Playfish deal may have more of an impact on EA Mobile in terms of learnings about freemium pricing models – a relevant topic given the increasing use of in-app payments on the App Store – than heralding an upswing in mobile releases based on Playfish’s Facebook games.

Talking of in-app payments, what’s EA Mobile’s strategy in this area? Pagano says that the company has one principle set in stone: “We believe that what is premium should be charged as premium,” he says. “Customers respect and accept that. If we take a game like Need For Speed Shift to iPhone, it’s a fantastic game, and people are prepared to pay a premium for that.”

But? “There is an understanding that we could actually do a favour to the business as well as to consumers by experimenting with different models,” he continues.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean giving things away for free though. It may be about giving a different engagement to the consumer with a very small barrier to entry, and then a way to monetise that further down the line. We are open and certainly not against trying different business models, but maybe there’s a time and place to do it.”