Bloomberg has launched an App Portal that gives its 315,000 desktop terminal subscribers' access to applications created by third party developers.

The Portal has been launched with 45 applications across a variety of categories, including, data analysis, news and research, portfolio management and risk analysis, valuation and pricing, data visualization and technical analysis. This follows Bloomberg's opening of its market data APIs to third party developers in February.

The launch of the Portal is an attempt to emulate the success of Apple's iTunes store in providing a shop window for third parties to sell their applications to professional investors. Like Apple, Bloomberg will take a 30% cut of all sales through the portal. The Bloomberg App Portal team follows a formal application review and selection protocol. Once selected, application developers receive technical and business support from the Bloomberg team as part of an on-boarding and software quality assurance process. Bloomberg claim that they are currently working with up to 300 third party developers.

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The introduction of App Portals for the big platforms, such as Bloomberg, was almost inevitable, given the success of Apple's and Android's App markets. An obvious question is: 'Will Thomson Reuters will follow?' A more interesting question is whether TMS suppliers, e.g. SunGard AvantGard, and banks will follow, e.g. Deutsche Bank turning their Autobahn App into an open market for both 3rd party and in-house Apps? However, what is clear that it will take many years before we get a truly Global Open App market in the cloud with banks and suppliers making their Apps generally available:

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