For the first time in five years, Bloomberg has redesigned its mobile app, and millions of Bloomberg mobile users will be upgrading today.

When the iPhone first launched in 2007, there was no app store. That came a year later in July 2008 and with it, Bloomberg’s mobile app, which was available on day one. Bloomberg immediately became one of the most popular apps in the market, revered for its clean design and seamless integration with Apple’s OS software. It took advantage of the accelerometer, allowing the user to toggle between landscape and portrait setting, and updated content alongside a feed that would allow you to check stock portfolios and market data. 

It created excitement in the financial industry, and is relied on by millions of users each week.

With the new iOS 7 update, Bloomberg saw the opportunity to improve an already good thing. Oke Okaro, General Manager and General Head of Mobile and Connected Devices at Bloomberg, realized that a redesign would help continue to push Bloomberg ahead of its competitors in the mobile space. 

According to Okaro, there were several changes he wanted to implicate within the redesign. Besides creating a more modern and integrated experience, the Bloomberg team wanted to make sure the app featured video; a medium that has increased massively across Bloomberg’s respective platforms. They also wanted to update in real time.

Okaro also wanted to create an efficient way for users to track stocks and data that matters to them, so that users could customize and curate a feed of information that would carry over to any platform Bloomberg was accessed from, whether it be from a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer.

In an interview with Business Insider, Okaro told us about the design overhaul. In Bloomberg’s new app, all of the verticals of news people can access are now exposed, available to be added to a “watchlist”. If you add Google, Apple, and Yahoo! to your personal watchlist, you can see them in one spot, updating live.

“You weren’t able to do that before,” Okaro said. “You’d have to go search each security and then come back home to select the next. In the new Bloomberg app, it’s not as though you’re going down one street and you’re coming back up to go down another. We now give you the ability to travel in whichever way you want, from wherever you are within the app. Even if you force quit [the app], wherever you left from is where we bring you back when you reopen it.”

Here is what the new Bloomberg app looks like:

You are able to compare securities to one another over a specific time period. This is a feature that sets Bloomberg apart from other financial apps in the mobile space:

“Our number one goal is to give people exactly what they need and want with the least amount of effort, and this accomplishes that. You have to go to less places to find what you’re looking for.”

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