From complex to simple: the evolution of interfaces of mobile trading terminals

The stock market is a high-tech and highly competitive industry, where considerable attention is paid to the reliability and speed of the solutions used. For this purpose, technologies of direct access to the exchange, bypassing brokerage systems, fast data transfer protocols and trading terminals of the new generation (right inside which you can “assemble” robots for trading) are being developed.

In addition, the style of many traders implies constant monitoring of the market situation in order to be able to react to the changed market conditions. All this led to the fact that the era of mobility in the stock market (including the Russian one) began more than 10 years ago, much earlier than in some other industries.
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In our today's topic, we will look at how the interfaces of mobile trading terminals have changed (using the example of ITinvest applications ).

A bit of history: Windows Mobile, Start menu and stylus

Awareness of the need to create a mobile trading application came to us at the beginning of the two thousandth. As a result, in 2003, ITinvest was the first Russian broker (and one of the first in Europe) to complete the development of a Pocket Trade mobile terminal for devices running Windows Mobile 2003 .



Windows Mobile device, controlled by stylus

This operating system largely echoed the paradigm of the desktop OS from Microsoft - for example, there was a Start menu and folders with program files.



Shortcut to the Pocket Trade application in the program folder on a Windows Mobile device

An important point - the interaction with the interface of the operating system and applications was then carried out using the stylus.

This made it possible to make a mobile terminal, in terms of functionality, practically not inferior to its desktop companion of that time - users could receive information about their accounts, bids and transactions in real time, view charts, enter purchase and sale orders (including with a complex combination of parameters) , view stock news.



Order queue and order entry window PocketTrade

A large number of different settings were also available (including design and fonts):



PocketTrade settings window and order entry window in horizontal orientation

The general similarity of the mobile OS with the XP desktop that was usual for that moment, the extensive trading capabilities of the application and the possibility of its flexible configuration contributed to the growth of its popularity.

However, at the beginning and the middle of the two thousandths in the mobile device market, the rule was a completely different operating system - the Symbian platform, which by 2004 occupied a market share of 88%. It was impossible to ignore this system, and therefore thousands of users of Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola devices.

Web version for Symbian

It is necessary to understand that in 2003-2004 there was no fast and cheap mobile Internet, therefore it was necessary to ensure minimum traffic consumption. For this, in the version for Windows Mobile, the function of stopping updates was implemented, but when the user turned them on, the volume of data being pumped was still large.

In many ways, this was why it was decided to make the trading terminal for Symbian browser-based (this also made it possible to remove the problem of installing the application - in the era before the App Store and Google Play it was all more complicated). Actually, thanks to the “browser”, users of any mobile devices (and even PCs) could eventually use the Pocket Trade Web .

Among the functions of the new terminal was a review of the state of the account and portfolio, a table of quotes, charts, news, and trading.

This is how the order entry window looked like:



And here are the charts of the value of financial instruments:



The presence of the web version of the terminal and the option for Windows Mobile made it possible to cover most of the users of mobile devices. For several years this was the case, and then there was a revolution led by Steve Jobs.

“Who needs a stylus?”

The iPhone quickly broke into the market and very quickly changed it - a huge number of complex devices with incomprehensible interfaces went to the dustbin of history. The Apple iOS operating system was “sharpened” under control with a finger, not a stylus, because “each of us already has 10 styluses,” as Jobs said.



Even the Android operating system came under a certain influence of the iOS touchscreen — the first Google OS demos were quite different from what the system had become by the day of release. One of the main differences is that at the beginning of Android, touch controls were used to a lesser extent.

Finger management has changed the way users interact with the application - and this has already resulted in a cardinal reformatting of the interfaces of mobile terminals.

Managing your finger is easier and more natural (and therefore more convenient) than working with a stylus. However, this manipulator is much thinner, and with its help you can perform more complex actions. The proliferation of touch interfaces has led to the fact that the controls in applications have become larger, in addition, there have been various hints when entering data.

For example, this is the window for entering a request in the iSmart iOS application and the Android application version:



Order entry window in ITinvest mobile terminals - iSmart for iOS and Android

Compared to the similar window of the old Pocket Trade for Windows Phone, the number of interface elements and settings has been significantly reduced. Navigation menus and buttons for performing transactions, on the contrary, have become much more - this has made it possible to speed up the data entry process.

In just a few years since the release of the iPhone, the interfaces, including trading applications, have changed significantly. The stylus seems to be a thing of the past, but the story may take another sharp turn.

What will happen next

After the death of Steve Jobs, Apple was headed by Tim Cook, whose vision on many issues of the company's product development does not coincide with what his former boss had declared. For example, Jobs was not eager to produce small tablets and large smartphones, but the iPad Mini and iPhone 6 Plus have long been on store shelves.

Now the media is discussing the possible release of Apple's own stylus. It is reported that it may be released in 2015 and will work with an enlarged iPad tablet:



Of course, this does not mean that Apple's stylus will work with its smartphones. However, the fact that the size of the iPhone is gradually approaching the size of the tablet, says that such a course of events can not be excluded.

Be that as it may, the reappearance of the stylus (WaCom) now on the tablets contributes to the emergence of competition between these devices and desktops, the OS of which are increasingly moving towards the finger interfaces. In addition, with the release of the new Windows 10, which is likely to introduce a common core for all types of OS (mobile, tablets, desktops), the competition of mobile terminals with “ordinary” ones can disappear altogether. In a few years, it is quite possible for a terminal to appear that has two different interfaces, “sharpened” for work in a mobile environment and on a desktop computer.