When it first arrived in 1982, the Bloomberg Terminal transformed Wall Street.

The disruption of Bloomberg terminal, function by function

Platform: How Bloomberg’s walled garden might be breached.

Research: Why “Bloomberg’s Vietnam” failed to capture the right market.

News: When owning a news bureau ceases to be a competitive advantage.

Chat: How the world’s first social network could lose its stickiness.

Data: Why the information long tail doomed Bloomberg’s data moat.

The disruption of the Bloomberg terminal, function by function.

By doing so, it has made itself increasingly vulnerable to disruption. The world is changing around Bloomberg, but Bloomberg has been resistant to changes that might cannibalize the value of the terminal. Morgan have started looking more seriously at ways to chip away at their annual Bloomberg bills. Specialized alternatives are cropping up for a fraction of the cost, while the financial industry as a whole moves away from the traders reliant on the terminal and towards high frequency trading & automation. Very few Bloomberg Terminal users use more than a “small percentage” of the thousands of functions available through it, according to Fortune.Ī handful of the several thousand analysis functions available for use through the Bloomberg Terminal. The following year, general spending on financial market data and analysis rose to a record $28.5B, while Bloomberg lost market share, according to the Financial Times.

In 2016, sales of the Bloomberg Terminal dropped for the second time ever. At the same time, Bloomberg’s share of that market shrank.īloomberg’s weaknesses have become increasingly more apparent. Reporting on the news, doing research, and other unprofitable lines of business are tolerable for Bloomberg if they can deliver value to terminal users.ĭuring 2017, general spending on financial market data and analysis rose 3.6% to a record $28.5 billion. The revenue Bloomberg drives from these other lines of business, however, is negligible when compared to the terminal.

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