According to a Gartner report, smartphone sales in Singapore are expected to hit 1.6 mn by the end of this year. That equates to more than one fifth of the city-state’s population walking around with a mobile device in hand.
Of those 1.6 mn users, it’s inevitable that at least some will want to use their phone for trading and investments. After all, stock trading online from home personal computers has already established itself as the de rigueur way to manage investments.
To cater to this rapidly growing segment of the investing population, several major brokerages and banks in Singapore have launched stock trading applications for the most popular mobile devices. The latest to jump on the wagon is financial group PhillipCapital, which partnered with Samsung Electronics to release a trading app for the Android mobile operating system in June.
The app, called the POEMS Android after PhillipCapital’s POEMS e-trading platform, has seen more than 500 downloads in the two weeks since its launch and its usage is expected to grow exponentially, according to the brokerage.
‘Based on the adoption rate, we expect internet and mobile trading of shares to double in the next two years,’ says Asa Soo, head of business development at PhillipCapital, in a statement. ‘Internet trading on POEMS already makes up more than half of our trading volume.’
The app allows POEMS clients to access their accounts from Android phones or tablets. They can download it from the POEMS website or from the Samsung app store, and it comes pre-loaded on the Samsung Galaxy S II. Statistics from Gartner predict that Android phones such as the S II are expected to dominate the Asia-Pacific phone market by 2012.
Other brokerages that have rolled out trading apps include OCBC Securities, Kim Eng and DMG.
Singapore Exchange (SGX) has remarked favorably on the trend. Chew Sutat, head of securities at SGX, says mobile services would allow investors greater flexibility and choice in managing their investments.
