The turnover in mobile trading has seen more than a five-fold jump in the past one year as the increasing use of smartphones, improved connectivity and user-friendly trading applications have eased executing trades on the medium.
?Trading volumes through mobiles have seen strong growth this year and we see a lot of potential in this offering,? said Ravi Varanasi, head – business development, NSE. ?There has been a shift in volumes from the web to the mobile. We are seeing more and more clients who are trading exclusively on the mobile platform,? added B Gopkumar, head of broking, Kotak Securities.
?A large number of traders use mobile trading, especially when commuting from home to work to be in constant touch with the markets. Apart from traders, high net-worth individuals and retail investors are also taking to mobile trading,? said Vinay Agrawal, executive director, equity broking, Angel Broking.
The rise in sales of smart phones, advancement in technology and the growing need to trade in a more comfortable and convenient manner has helped increase the acceptability of the medium. ?Growth was driven by infrastructure availability like 2G and 3G bandwidth, compatibility of handsets and operating systems. Support system provided by the platform owners like J2ME, Android, iOS, Bada, Windows and Blackberry to the application developers has boosted growth,? said Gopkumar. Emergence of user-friendly trading applications has also helped. According to Varanasi, NSE provides mobile applications to investors that are compatible with basic phones that have a GPRS connection as well as smart phones.
Mobile trading has its advantages. It provides trading on the go without the need to depend on traditional platforms. ?We have seen significant growth in trades through category B and C cities through mobile platforms, thus enabling financial inclusion,? said Gopkumar.
There are hurdles. ?One of the challenges is lack of connectivity in remote areas that restricts a person from executing his trades,? said Agrawal. However, market participants are confident that the acceptability of this medium will grow. ?Coverage is much better than it was a few years ago and there will be improvement in issues related to network connectivity,? said Agrawal.
