Nokia's Conversations blog has highlighted four areas in the application:
- Personalized news, portfolio tracking and breaking news alerts.
- Customized watchlists for stocks, mutual funds, bonds, ETFs and more.
- Download your favorite Bloomberg TV and Radio shows to enjoy offline.
- Deep pin Live Tiles for stocks, bonds, indices, futures and currencies.
The Bloomberg Hub is a typical niche application. It's set up for a particular demographic and it gives the users as much as it possibly can. Portfolio management is probably the most important function, having quick access to your holdings makes for an attractive feature, although the application also has a lot of customisation options.
The live tile support is welcome, but may not be as up to date as some traders and managers would like it to be because of the limitations on the refresh rate of a live tile under the current Windows Phone code. I'll be interested to see if this is improved on in Windows Phone 8, but for the moment, tapping on the live tiles to open the app will allow people to pick up an instant update on the relevant numbers.
Owners of other Windows Phones, such as Samsung and HTC, might look over at these applications and wonder about the exclusive nature of Bloomberg, and other Nokia supported applications, and ask why their handsets are not able to run these applications(?) The simple answer is that Nokia is putting in the legwork to bring these partners to Windows Phone, and software is how Nokia has decided to differentiate its brand in the Windows Phone market.
It's a route open to other manufacturers, of course, but Nokia seems to be the company putting in the most effort here at the moment.
You can read more on the app at Conversations, and it's available in the Nokia Collections section of the Windows Marketplace.