Money.net and Symphony are attempting to chip away at Bloomberg's longstanding desktop dominance, but there's little evidence that the newest generation of 'Bloomberg killers' will have broad success, Institutional Investor reported.
Financial traders and investors have long complained about Bloomberg's lofty price point, and Money.net and Symphony have managed to peel off some price-sensitive users at smaller firms. But no competitor has been able to successfully dethrone Bloomberg's on its core value proposition, which is a full data and news offering, proactive customer service, and the deepest network of users.
The notion of 'Bloomberg killers' dates as far back as 1989, when Reuters launched its 'Decision 2000' project that was meant to re-establish Reuters' supremacy, according to II. That ultimately failed, as did a host of other erstwhile de-throners over the years.
Bloomberg provides one-stop shopping for data, analytics, news, and trading; many of its users have been on the system for a decade or two and have a loyalty to the system, which makes it hard for upstarts to break in.
Recently, the biggest threat to Bloomberg has been large-scale shifts in money and banking that have compressed profit margins and IT budgets. As a result, Bloomberg's terminal growth has slowed to a crawl over the past five years.