The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) has launched a mobile application for receiving live quotes of its SENSEX index. Called BSE SENSEX Mobile Streamer, the Java based application is a 113 kb file, which on installation asks the user to choose between two options: "Blackberry" and "other". Pertinent segmentation. The functionality of the application is limited to only what its name suggests: live SENSEX quotes. There is no information on other BSE indices, no inputs on company announcements. Just the scrips, buy price, sell price, sell quantity etc. It is significantly limited. You may download the installation file here. After installing the application on my Nokia N95, I realized that it's not optimized for my handset, and the interface is terrible. The data is displayed in a tabular format like a Bloomberg trading info screen, font size is too large, and there is horizontal scrolling. Above all, there is no search function, and stocks that are not a part of the Sensex index, are not available. What's the point of limiting access? No wonder that Madhu Kannan, MD & CEO BSE, chooses to focus on the real time quotes in the formal annoucement, adding that more features will be added later. Hopefully, this is version 0.1, and not 1.01 as the filename suggested. While live stock quotes are welcome, unless you're using it just for real-time quotes, you'd probably be better off with other applications. SMS stock market price alerts were, a couple of years ago, considered important revenue earners for VAS companies…
