Gamedaily (by way of Modojo) have posted an extensive interview with Michel Guillemot, CEO of Gameloft, the mobile games arm of global games publisher Ubisoft.

Modojo: Why were U.S. consumers slower to adopt mobile gaming, and a mobile lifestyle in general, in the late 1990s and early 2000s?

Michel Guillemot: There were a few factors that contributed to the slow growth of the mobile market in the U.S. Primarily, it was due to a lack of high end handsets that were 3D enabled or even game enabled. The phones that were available on the market in the 90s and early 2000 were black and white screens that were neither BREW nor Java, so you were unable to download games onto them. There were very few select phones that were game enabled, but the screens were small and it was black and white, so the idea of playing a game on your phone wasn't that exciting, especially since you had the option of colored screens on other platforms. That slowly started to change in 2002, also the same point when Gameloft entered the U.S. market. Colored screens started to appear and the notion of gaming on your phone started to shift. The graphics were grainy and the images appeared very pixilated. However, the possibility and capability to design great looking games was there. It was a matter of waiting for handset technology to catch up to mobile game capabilities.

The interview is an interesting one, as the US market is still a new market, with mobile games only just beginning to catch on. With Gameloft operating 15 offices worldwide, the interview sheds a lot of light on the differences between the various markets.