This document discusses speeding up foreign exchange (FX) mobile trading apps. It notes that FX traders demand high-performance tools to quickly react to market changes. While online FX platforms boast fast execution speeds, mobile apps often have inconsistent performance. The document then outlines hurdles to high performance in mobile apps like network latency and the mobile last mile. It introduces the Neumob Mobile App Accelerator, which provides end-to-end acceleration to speed apps 2-10x through features like traffic offloading, dynamic acceleration, and caching. This enables FX apps to add more real-time data without hindering performance.

1. App acceleration for a mobile-first world
Introduction: The Costs and Causes of Poor Mobile App Performance
The foreign exchange market, or FX, is the mostly widely traded market
in the world. As a virtual marketplace, FX doesn’t face any physical
restrictions, allowing people and institutions worldwide to trade 24 hours
per day. This has made the FX market extremely popular. In fact, The Bank
for International Settlements puts daily FX trade value over $5.3 trillion.
That’s more than 50 percent larger than the entire annual output of the UK,
according to the World Bank.
Traders worldwide are always active in the FX market, creating an agile
marketplace that responds almost instantaneously to global events and
country-specific conditions. As conditions change, FX traders seek to
make profits from exchange rate fluctuations.
To take advantage of exchange rate moves, FX traders need to react
quickly with whichever trading tools they use to place their trade orders.
As such, they demand consistently high performance from their tools,
regardless of location, network conditions or trading tool functionality.
That’s why FX trading platforms look to speed as a distinct competitive
differentiator to attract and retain customers. For example, OANDA puts
performance data front-and-center on their fxTrade™ platform homepage.
Speeding Foreign Exchange
(FX) Mobile Trading Apps
A Neumob White Paper
FIGURE 1. OANDA Stresses the Importance of Speed

2. App acceleration for a mobile-first world
Whitepaper: Speeding FX Trading Mobile Apps
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OANDA claims the fxTrade platform executes 98% of trades within
0.069 seconds or less. That’s great performance for an online platform.
However, such claims cannot yet be made specifically for FX trading
mobile apps. With apps, despite their enormous and growing popularity,
inconsistent performance continues to be rampant. This is evidenced,
for instance, by a couple recent reviews posted for OANDA fxTrade’s iOS
and Android mobile apps.
A quick search of FX trading mobile apps in the App Store and on
Google Play yields a vast number of similar complaints about app speed
and performance for many of the top apps. In the minds of FX traders,
the words ‘slow’, ‘lag’, and ‘hangs’ translate into “I risk losing lots of
money.” As such, it isn’t hard to imagine the most common reactions
by FX traders to a slow mobile app experience. A recent survey from
Dimensional Research reveals that the majority of users take one of
three actions when faced with a slow mobile app, all of which are bad
for the app creator. Users uninstall the app, stop using it or switch to a
competitor’s app.
Poor mobile app performance could cost an FX trading platform millions
in lost revenues. Once an app gets stuck with a reputation for being
slow, the brand could be damaged for years. That’s because many FX
FIGURE 2. Traders Want Faster FX Apps
FIGURE 3. The Correlation Between Mobile App Speed and Abandonment

3. App acceleration for a mobile-first world
Whitepaper: Speeding FX Trading Mobile Apps
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traders have already glimpsed the future and are adjusting to it now. A
2015 study by E*TRADE found that 81 percent of investors under age
44 categorized the ability to invest on the go as “critical”. Moreover,
55 percent of active investors (your most valuable users) already want
wearables, such as the Apple Watch, to do their investing.
This desire for on-the-go capabilities and tools means that FX trading
apps must perform fast anywhere their users go, whether in zones of
super-fast connectivity or zones of spotty mobile coverage. Apps that
cannot provide high performance, availability and trading convenience
under all conditions will be left behind by the majority of traders.
Hurdles to High Performance in FX Mobile Apps
The traditional PC-focused Internet (PC Internet) and TCP/IP protocol
were never designed to support the fast delivery of mobile apps. As
Figure 5 below demonstrates, geography-induced latency causes a
minimum communications delay of 70-300 milliseconds, depending on
the distance between end users and a trading app’s origin server. TCP/
FIGURE 4: FX Trading Apps Must be Fast Everywhere
FIGURE 5: Latency Caused by the Traditional PC Internet

4. App acceleration for a mobile-first world
Whitepaper: Speeding FX Trading Mobile Apps
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IP further slows app delivery by adding unnecessary communications
overhead to each transmission. The protocol requires multiple
handshakes between end-user devices and an app’s origin server in order
to deliver a single object.
The biggest hurdle to FX app performance occurs over the ‘Mobile Last
Mile’, where FX traders exist and move. The last mile extends from the
Internet’s edge, to the cell tower and down to mobile traders’ devices.
This is where 70-90 percent of FX mobile app delivery latency takes
place, which explains why FX traders face delays even when they are
located in the same city as an app’s point of origin.
Delays have always seemed inevitable for FX mobile apps, because they
are constantly making 3rd party calls for data between end-user devices,
the app’s origin and multiple data providers. All of these communications
must traverse the mobile last mile. The end result has traditionally been
that app creators have had to make compromising choices about their
apps. Either they reduce functionality in order to speed performance or
load up on functionality and accept slower performance.
Unfortunately, FX traders don’t accept the tradeoffs that app developers
struggle with constantly. Traders want full functionality and super high
FIGURE 6: The Impact of the Mobile Last Mile
FIGURE 7: More Features Equal More Risks to Performance
Options like the
ones shown here
are features that
increase 3rd-party
calls and data
use, and slow
down FX apps.
Live updates and
graphic rendering,
as well as action
options will also
eat up mobile
bandwidth and
slow your app.

5. App acceleration for a mobile-first world
Whitepaper: Speeding FX Trading Mobile Apps
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performance simultaneously. These types of FX trading app reviews,
calling for more and more functional enhancements, show the state of
app consumer demand today:
Such demands are common and can be found in any FX app’s reviews.
It seems unrealistic to expect FX mobile apps to continue piling more
functions together. Yet, ignoring user demands when competing apps are
just a couple clicks away would be perilous to any app creator.
How to Speed Your FX App and Add Functionality
Neumob has built the world’s first end-to-end accelerator designed to
speed FX trading mobile apps. Delivered as a two-line SDK, the Neumob
Mobile App Accelerator (Accelerator) provides an FX app with instant
access to acceleration features at all stages of the mobile delivery
process—the first mile, middle mile and last mile.
By eliminating latency in each mobile delivery stage, the Accelerator
speeds FX apps by a factor of 2x-10x, whether an app and its users are
located within the same city or on different continents. The Accelerator
delivers consistent speed, because we purpose-built it as a Mobile First
product. We recognized that optimal mobile app acceleration requires
three major elements:
1. Resource offload in the first mile
2. Middle mile acceleration across the Internet
3. WAN-like acceleration over the Mobile Last Mile to end-user devices
FIGURE 8: Traders Continue to Push for More Features and Functions

6. App acceleration for a mobile-first world
Whitepaper: Speeding FX Trading Mobile Apps
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Providing optimizations around each element, the Neumob Accelerator
achieves the fastest possible download speeds for any given FX app.
Figure 9 below shows a detailed breakdown of the acceleration features
we designed into the Neumob Accelerator at each stage of the mobile
app delivery process.
Beyond the features listed in Figure 9, it’s important to note how Neumob
uniquely circumvents latencies induced by the PC Internet, Cloud and
TCP/IP. Neumob has built the only truly global middle mile network of
PoP servers to accelerate the Internet-to-Mobile last mile handoff. We
manage PoPs (points of presence) in 40 cities on 6 continents. At the
same time, our high-performance protocol is designed to address high-
latency networks and the request/response nature of mobile-based
applications while maintaining all the beneficial features of standard
transfer protocols. By increasing the TCP throughput and maintaining
a pool of open connections, the Accelerator significantly reduces the
number of round-trips between the end user, application servers and
3rd party data sources. This accelerates mobile app response times to
provide a LAN-like experience.
By speeding owned and third-party calls, the Accelerator enables FX
app creators to incorporate more real-time data feeds than ever thought
possible, without hindering app performance.
FIGURE 9: Accelerating the Entire Mobile App Delivery Process
- Traffic offload
- Connection
offload
- Persistent
connections
- Neumob Cloud Routing Protocol
- Neumob cloud Communication Protocol
- Neumob Cloud Compression
- Neumob Cloud Dynamic Acceleration
- Neumob Cloud Static Caching
- Neumob Cloud Encryption
- Neumob Access Control
- Neumob 3-POP WAN
Acceleration to device
- Neumob Mobile Protocol
(not TcP/IP)
- Neumob Software-Defined
Content Routing
- Neumob Mobile Encryption
- Neumob Mobile Compression
- Neumob Mobile Dynamic
Acceleration (ex: Rest API calls
and 3rd-party calls)
- Neumob Mobile Static Caching
(ex: images, video)

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Whitepaper: Speeding FX Trading Mobile Apps
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Getting Started with Mobile App Acceleration is Easy
Neumob makes the task of accelerating mobile apps extremely simple. A
developer needs only download the Neumob SDK, install the SDK’s two
lines of code onto an app, and release the app update.
Once the update is released, anyone with access can open the Neumob
control panel, select the relevant domains and/or URLs to accelerate, and
the FX app begins to accelerate in real time.
Conclusion
FX Traders have much higher demands for features and performance
than do users of most other apps. For traders, speed is money, and they
will not continue to risk their money on FX mobile apps that offer anything
less than optimal performance. This compels FX app creators to strive for
speeds that equal those of the traditional PC Internet.
The lack of a mobile-first infrastructure has hampered efforts by CDN
and cloud service providers to accelerate mobile apps over the Mobile
Last Mile to user devices. As a result, FX traders lose their much desired
freedom to trade ‘on the go’ at any time they choose.
Neumob’s Mobile App Accelerator enables FX mobile app creators to
overcome the business damage caused by poor app performance on
end-user devices. We purpose-built our Accelerator as a Mobile First
solution so that businesses can deliver the fastest experiences possible
and gain loyal app users. Since we have solved the issues that lead
to Mobile Last Mile delays, we can accelerate the performance of any
Mobile App, whether its users are located across the world or down the
street.
For a free trial of Neumob, sign up on the Neumob portal at
http://portal.neumob.com.
FIGURE 10: Getting Started is Easy