It’s not exactly Angry Birds or Call of Duty but, well, this is Wall Street. Financial giant Bloomberg this morning launched an app store with offerings like Trade Navigator, Market Grader and, yes, Angry Bonds.
Alas, Angry Bonds is not about disgruntled 007 agents. Instead, it is one of more than 45 apps in the Bloomberg App Portal that perform tasks like risk analysis and client management. The company didn’t disclose specific prices for the apps, which are free to preview, but it’s a safe bet they cost more than 99 cents. The Financial Times reports that Bloomberg will, like Apple, take a 30 percent cut.
The launch is significant because Bloomberg has now opened up its vast pool of financial data to outside developers who can then craft new products to help traders and analysts. Until now, the company founded by New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg has closely guarded its proprietary system, which costs around $ 20,000 a year for a license.
The app store comes at a time that Bloomberg is adopting its famous financial terminal for the mobile environment through tools like Bloomberg Anywhere and selling a new edition of its core product, Bloomberg Next. The company and its main competitor Thomson Reuters were hard hit by the economic meltdown in 2009 that decimated many of their financial clients.
Here are some more screenshots of the apps (don’t have too much fun…)
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