http://www.hindu.com/2010/09/03/stories/2010090356111700.htm

Following are the articles by The Hindu, Financial Express and Times of India

Financial Express

The Hindu

Times of india

Picture this:

-There are more than 6 leading Mobile Operating systems.
- Around 2400 form factors.
- Each Mobile OS has multiple versions and newer ones are being introduced regularly.

Fragmentation is here to stay – Differentiation being the key reason.
At this point in time it would suffice to point out the obvious – the mobile market is constantly evolving at break neck speed. It is one of the fastest growing markets and mobile companies are leaving no stone unturned to differentiate themselves and garner as much share of this seemingly ceiling free market. The advent of applications has markedly changed the game in this space. Phones are no longer being bought for ‘calls’ and ‘messaging’, rather for the exciting and limitless possibilities that applications provide to a user at the palm of his / her hand, on the go.

Having said this, now let’s explore what companies may be thinking.

It is indeed in this kind of a dynamic and exciting market place, the true benefits of a SaaS model surfaces to the fore. Today, to develop a comprehensive mobile trading or a mobile banking application, companies are considering shelling out anywhere between a $ 100K to Half a Million! This, just to create on one device. Presuming that the world economy was back on its feet and booming , companies are able to afford this kind of a spend, almost sure of recovering the costs in no time. Still does it make any sense at all? They then spend additional amounts for upgrades, maintenance, newer devices etc. Why?

To borrow from a cliché – Change is the only thing permanent – hence SaaS. Companies operating on this model have managed to disrupt existing business practices and emerged as forward thinking partners of choice.

With these known facts it is not surprising to witness more companies opening up to the idea of engaging an IT partner that operates on a SaaS model.
Consider the following benefits:

- Zero capital Expenditure.

- Pay only for what you use.

- The very DNA of the model allows for it to be the fastest time to market.

- Most agile in adapting to changes.

- With the inclusion of a Cloud Compute package, negligible server infrastructure cost.

- No more mundane ‘change management’ strategies or black-out periods.

- Adapt on the move, running.

- Greater involvement, engagement and commitment of the vendor / partner.

- Least amount of interference with company’s IT functioning. Core competency gains greater mind-space.

- Scale up and down on demand – based on traffic and content

- Save cost on running minimum number of servers during non-traffic hours.

Being improperly forward or bold is what the dictionary describes as being Sassy. Maybe it’s time.

Industry leaders came about highlighting the existing situation with the capital markets industry in India and various other possibilities to aim a level of 3X market penetration by 2020.

State of the Indian Capital Markets was summarized as :

• Around 85% of the turnover in markets comes from only 5 cities in India.
• India has a savings rate of around 30% , one the highest across the globe.
• There are about 550 Million Mobile users.
• There are about 80 Million Internet users
• Around 15 million direct investors in Capital Markets going by the record of 15 million existing tradable accounts.
• Market Capitalization of $1.120 Billion
• There are 2100 Brokers and 200,000 Trading Terminals
• There are about 3 Million people selling Insurance in India.

Key Questions for future were:

1. How does India increase this 200,000 trading terminals to 1 million in the next 10 yrs?
2. Is aiming for 3x before 2020 an extremely modest target?
3. How do we spur this retail participation and 100% inclusion?

The most common solution to this challenge or answers to the above question discussed were:

• To find an affordable way to acquire more clients and provide greater accessibility to the capital markets.
• To educate the potential investor on the markets and build trust and confidence.

As agreed by most present, was that, mobile will eventually turn out to be the most effective, affordable and convenient tool to achieve this. Not only will it help in achieving the penetration levels so desired, the value add that it shall provide in terms of accessibility to important information, empowerment to the self directed investor by giving them anytime action-ability and building of confidence amongst investors, among others, will ultimately improve the health of one’s portfolio and serve as a boon in this volatility prone industry.

Among the panelists, there was also a crack at SPAM on SMS misguiding investors, but like everything in life, spam reflects a cross section of it, including the stock markets, which marketers try to cold-call/communicate to the huge no. of mobile subscriber, this as you know, was to exploit the communication ability to push information unsolicited, than to provide ability to fetch information of choice on demand anywhere for the user, which is what an mobile trading application for a brokerage user would do – i.e to empower.

Market Simplified, with its existing mobile trading technological offering that already serves the most developed capital market in the world, sees itself as being a prominent partner in realizing the goals set for the capital markets industry in India.

Just as, at the helm of the Internet boom, brokerages like Etrade, OptionsXpress built their billion dollar business by offering only online trading, by 2011 we could witness the emergence of brokerages that record the same volume of trades as the above online brokerages purely through mobile trading.

Interestingly, a survey from Scottrade found that “the idea of investing being fun is increasingly gaining traction within the generation – 35 percent of Gen Y invests because they find it enjoyable, up from 27 percent last year”. It further found that Gen Y investors (born 1983-1991, ages 18-26) are increasingly involved in the market and are changing perceptions of investing and that young investors are the most likely to manage their own investments and to describe investing as “fun and interesting“.

Another survey from Accelerant Research quoted “Gen Y demographic hooked on mobile bill pay and banking, proving that Baby Boomers have truly slipped into the unhip generation they thought they’d never be”.

The above surveys point to the rise of this new segment of “mobile traders” – mostly comprised of Gen Y – many of whom have discovered the stock markets from their mobile phones. This has become especially possible with the availability of a particularly user friendly mobile trading application such as what MarketSimplified offers.

In fact user friendly mobile trading platforms can increase trades originating from mobile devices. The following quote published in Barrons 2010 brokerage review reflects this phenomenon ...”…the mobile application, OX Mobile, is well designed, with streaming real-time data, charts, and watch lists, and stock, options, and futures trading. CEO David Fisher says, “We found that customers are doing significantly more trading through these phone-based apps than we thought possible.”

Clearly, for brokerages, the time to start offering mobile trading services is now!

Chicago, IL. – February 08, 2010 – MarketSimplified, Inc., a provider of cloud hosted SaaS mobile trading solutions designed for brokerages and financial institutions, today announced that the company experienced record growth in 2009, including tripling revenues and direct customers over the course of the year with major equities, forex and futures brokerages worldwide now using MarketSimplified Cloud Hosted SaaS Mobile Trading solution. MarketSimplified also expanded device coverage to Palm Pre & Google Nexus One(Android Phone) trading applications that works across multiple wireless devices.

For the latest information follow MarketSimplified on the Web at:

* Essential MarketSimplified Brief(pdf)
* MarketSimplified Blog(this)
* MarketSimplified on Twitter
* MarketSimplified on Facebook

About MarketSimplified
MarketSimplified is best known in the U.S Brokerage Industry for its 6 week Cloud Hosted SaaS Mobile Middleware solution that offers one simple zero cost SaaS model and eradicates the need to deal with more than 6 mutually non-compliant mobile operating systems; contrary to popular belief a single mobile trading application cannot be used on all phones unlike internet trading where a single standard HTML compliant website works across computers

Today top brokerages in the world such as TD Ameritrade, OptionsXpress, FXCM, PFGBest, ChoiceTrade, TradeMonster & Kotak have chosen to be powered with MarketSimplified’s SaaS Mobility to deliver rich mobile trading experience to their customers through applications that is secure, scalable and runs on every leading smartphone in the market.

Market Simplified Inc., is the Chicago subsidiary of INXS Technologies. INXS Technologies Ltd was founded in 2006, is a startup comprising 30 passionate people located in Chennai, India. For more information, visit www.marketsimplified.com

• High Performance
• Streamlined Messaging
• Improved efficiency(less CPU per trade)
• Automated Scaling Groups via our renowned SaaS Model
• Overall it kicks Platform Gen-1’s butt delivering significant performance boost to our customers and end-users

The Next Generation Platform is queued to go live on this sunday Jan 10th 2010, some disruptions can be seen on this sunday night due to upgrades with users on monday onwards should see significant improvements in speeds with their experience of MarketSimplified Apps.

Does your favorite broker not offer mobile trading ? – Specially when it’s Free!

Why not ask your broker via customer support to make use of Market Simplified’s renowned free-SaaS mobile trading platform that supports every smartphone on planet earth(Not just Blackberry or iPhone, but Windows, Android, Palm & Symbian), thus giving you the open path to upgrade to any smartphone of your choice without losing ability to quickly place trades.

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“…The issue is not just whether these activities can be done via the mobile channel, but whether enough readers and trades will shift to the mobile channel to justify the investment….Mr. Schehr explained that the fit between active traders’ needs and the value of mobile trading is limited as the hardware form factor of smartphones makes technical analysis difficult, and other alternatives for rule-based trading diffuse much of the need for mobile access…”

We agree, wholeheartedly, here is why :

#1 Q: :..a user who trades via mobile once or twice a month is unlikely to generate revenue sufficient to cover the costs of developing the technology infrastructure to support the channel…”

#1 A: Investment for a retail brokerage to go mobile : Zero! (Yes!) on MarketSimplified

#2 Q: form factor of smartphones makes technical analysis difficult, and other alternatives for rule-based trading

#2 A: Power Options for End-Users : Technical Analysis & Analytics on MarketSimplified

#3 Q: “..As a result, Gartner advises those thinking of developing mobile trading capabilities to carefully analyze how much of their client base consists of active traders, and conservatively estimate the incremental revenue that mobile trading will deliver from them. This should then be compared with the cost of implementing mobile trading in multiple device platforms…”

A: Totally! with Mobility SaaS such as MarketSimplified, not only they can save good money in a tight economy that would otherwise be wasted on developing a mobile channel on multiple devices(ehw…6 smartphones out there), but still embrace cutting edge technology and remain relevant in the technology arms race(all five of the largest U.S. discount brokers offer mobile trading, so would you want to be left out ?); it is to have the cake and eat it too with MarketSimplified

Here is a simplistic illustration that can justify mobile trading ROI for US Brokers :

US Discount Brokers Mobile Trading ROI Comparison with SaaS

Also here is a detailed worksheet to plug in numbers yourself to see the truth US Discount Brokers Mobile Channel ROI WorkSheet

Seriously we’re not kidding!

Any US discount brokerage can get 6 mobile application of their own(iPhone, Blackberry, Windows, Android, Palm Pre & Symbian) on a zero cost saas model;

So what’s the catch ?, SaaS is pay per use(or per trade), thus if only 5% of active traders base of an brokerage end up using mobile, then it would cost them less than 0.5% of their revenue, now this is what is proportional & one hugely favoring the brokerage, while still letting them offer cutting edge technology to their customers, regardless of who they are, even if its only early adapters, tech-geeks and nobody beyond that.

Is this real ?  who is using this ? 5 discount brokers among the top brokerages listed by barrons, see marketsimplified.com

Place a Trade on the new Nexus One

Kicking off 2010 in style MarketSimplified this year is on its way to be :

• Industry leader to take brokerages mobile : Powers top 5 of 10 Brokers of Barrons list.
• Any Device, Forever Coverage : Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Palm Pre, Windows, Symbian and even trade on the latest Google Phone Nexus One
• Zero or minimal cost; Requires no budget; SaaS solution with pay for performance billing
• Typical Solution Delivery Time of 6 weeks
• Our customers speak for us – TD Ameritrade, OptionsXpress, FXCM

If you haven’t tried MarketSimplified on your phone yet, give it a go by visiting marketsimplified.com from your smartphone, whatever OS it maybe!

Does your favorite broker not offer mobile trading ?

Why not ask your broker via customer support to make use of Market Simplified’s renowned free-SaaS mobile trading platform that supports every smartphone on planet earth(Not just Blackberry or iPhone, but Windows, Android, Palm & Symbian), thus giving you the open path to upgrade to any smartphone of your choice without losing ability to quickly place trades.