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Bloomberg overhauls tablet app as BYOD gains grip on large trading firms

Bloomberg overhauls tablet app as BYOD gains grip on large trading firms

Bloomberg Anywhere app aimed at increasing use of mobile data services

Bloomberg has overhauled its tablet app for its Bloomberg Anywhere service, aimed at boosting the slow adoption of mobile computing among large trading firms.

The release of the new tablet app is available to customers using the $20,000 (£13,091) per year Bloomberg Anywhere data subscription service, as the data provider attempts to encourage users away from its traditional desktop services.

Up until now the tablet version of the app, released two years ago, has essentially been a scaled up version of Bloomberg's smartphone app, with four screens fitted onto the larger tablet screen. The new app will allow more detailed information to be viewed with in-depth technical analysis and the ability to do comparisons on stock price charts. There will also be access to in-house retail analyst data, as well as the addition of the Bloomberg Industries real time research and analytics platform.

Bloomberg has so far moved around 200,000 of its 300,000 users away from the traditional desktop licence model, with around 40,000 currently using tablets to access the data service.

John Waanders, head of Bloomberg Anywhere Mobile said that there is still substantial scope for increasing the number of mobile PC users among financial sector professional.

"There are areas of our industry where users are particularly mobile. Portfolio managers or investment bankers have a tendency to be away from their desk 50 or 60 percent of the time," he said. "Those guys have traditionally found it difficult to justify paying $20,000 for a system that only runs on their desktop. That is also a high price to pay for a BlackBerry app. Now we have got something that falls in between."

Waanders said that although use of corporate tablets has been largely restricted to top level staff, as in most enterprises, bring your own device trends mean that wider uptake of mobile computing devices among traders is occurring.

However uptake has been slower among larger sell side firms, which have remained more concerned over factor such as compliance.

"There is still a tremendous fear of things in some larger enterprises about compliance related problems. There have been policies against using anything but BlackBerrys because of the perception of security," he said.

"The smaller organisations tend to be leading the technology curve. The larger organisations are starting to implement BYOD policies and we are starting to see those get adopted more and more. Buy side traders are rapidly adopting technology like this, where the larger sell side guys area little slower.

Bloomberg recently exhibited a loosening of complaince by trading firms with regards to the use of social media, with the announcement earlier this month that it would pull Twitter feeds into its trading terminals.

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