Still Brokers' Preferred after Removal from iOS? Fazzaco's Followup on Apple's Ban on MetaTrader

It has been more than half a month since the two best-selling retail forex trading apps of MetaQuotes, MetaTrader 4 and 5, were quietly taken down from Apple's iOS App Store on September 24th. So far (Oct 10, 2022), we heard no comments whatsoever from either MetaQuotes or Apple.

Fazzaco published an article in just a few days, "3 Reason behind MT4/5 Removal from App Store", guessing the reasons why the apps were pulled off shelf. Later on, Fazzaco invited a few industry peers for a poll, trying to have a peek at how forex brokers actually feel about this incident.

Poll's Results Are A Bit Surprising

There was a similar poll before, asking brokers which alternative they prefer over MetaTrader. The results showed that cTrader, developed by Spotware Systems, a company also based in Limassol, Cyprus, got the most votes, followed by MatchTrader, Leverate and XOpenHub.

Fazzaco, on the other hand, wanted to look into the possible impact of how MT4/5 affect the industry, from another angle, so what we asked was, "as a broker, will MT4/5 still be your preferred trading platform following the ban on App Store?"

Surprisingly, the poll's results showed that, out of all 36 votes, 58% of them still went with MTs, while only 42% said no. It can be thusly seen that MetaQuotes' apps do have a broad and deep impact on forex trading, something that can hardly be eliminated with one single setback.

What Numbers Don't Tell us is Always What Stirs Things up

Numbers are definitive. Just like what this small poll told us, that MTs are not overthrown by Apple's ban, and forex brokers are still inclined to use them. But as a matter of fact, if we go to another angle, and there are something we can't see with all these numbers standing up front.

- Fear of uncertainty

A comment says in the poll that he will never use MTs again after what happened, because today they were removed from App Store, tomorrow they will stop working altogether. Uncertainty, that is the worst nightmare for any business, because nobody wants to tie themselves and their clients onto the unknown source of uncertainty that MTs are going through at this moment, which seems completely unnecessary.

- Habits have inertia

A moving object cannot stop the motion immediately, it has to decelerate first. Simple physics. Everything we know has inertia, even our habits. For now, the reason why many brokers are still considering continue using MTs is probably because they don't want to go against their clients' habits. Let's not even mention those investors who came out unscathed (for now) because they don't even use iOS, those who are affected will not change their habits in a short period of time. As a result, a client-centric broker has to factor in their habits (after all, MetaTraders once accounted for nearly 79% of market share). Nokia still had a few good years after iPhone 4 came out, hadn't it?

A Calm Surface

Although the forex market is fussing about the MT's removal, there is still no statement from MetaQuotes. Even when Fazzaco visited the official websites of MT4/5 on Oct 10, we still saw links to download iOS versions under "Mobile Trading". Of course, the links are not working anymore.

At present, we have heard voice from many industry peers, even some of the competitors of MetaQuotes. cTrader announced on social media, "Healthy and fair competition is what drives innovation, creativity, pricing and expertise, resulting in brokerages, traders and us, improving and becoming industry leaders...cTrader would like to express our support to them and see this matter be sorted out quickly."