Interview with Metaquotes – Lenar Fatkhullin

I recently had a chance to interview Lenar Fatkhullin, the Marketing Manager of Metaquotes Corporation – the developer of world’s most popular forex trading platform. I wanted to discuss several things with Lenar – specifically the introduction of MT5 and its acceptance. Lenar provided some excellent quotes and details, and I thank him for his valuable time.

Why did you develop and launch MT5? Many estimate that this is your take on the stocks/indices/futures markets after you conquered the whole forex market and that is why it was rumored to be priced at $500k and when acceptance wasn’t satisfying the pricing changed to the MT4 levels, is that so?

Well, one of the reasons for developing MetaTrader 5 was our desire to expand into new markets. Now we are actively working in this direction and cooperate with some stock exchanges. This is not a fast process, because not everything depends on us. But we are moving forward.

The second reason was that we knew that a platform better than MetaTrader 4 could be created. However, it was impossible to implement new functions within the architecture of the old platform. Therefore, we, as always, started to develop a new platform from scratch. This approach implies a long development process, but it gives you a free hand, and you can implement almost anything you want.

As for the rumors about the price of the platform, they have nothing to do with reality. We haven’t changed the prices, and we have never planned to cut them. Moreover, we think these prices are probably low and we are now discussing the idea of raising the price of MetaTrader 5.

Can you disclose some details about MT5′s pricing and number of servers sold so far? Can you also specify how many MT4 systems have you sold so far, how many brokers are using the MT4 (this is something everyone in the market would really like to know)?

As I’ve said, we want to revise the prices of the MetaTrader 5 platform. Therefore I wouldn’t like to disclose them, because they may become invalid in a few months. As for our clients, we have sold MetaTrader 5 to more than 50 companies in one year. And over 400 MetaTrader 4 platforms have been sold in 6 years. (That’s 400 different clients, there are many more servers than that as each brokers has White Labels, Franchises, IBs, etc  - MG).

What differentiates MT5 from MT4?

Many people think that since the terminals of MetaTrader 4 and MetaTrader 5 are similar, the platforms are also similar. But this is wrong. These are two different platforms. There are a lot of minor details and some conceptual differences.

First of all, the platforms are based on completely different trading systems. MetaTrader 5 uses a system adopted by exchanges. Secondly, MetaTrader 5 is based on a new architecture, which provides greater flexibility and productivity. New automated trading with MQL5 is much more powerful than its predecessor, but unfortunately it is not compatible with MQL4. MetaTrader 5 also offers absolutely new mobile trading. If we go into the details, we’ll just get a huge article, or even a series of articles. So let’s leave it at that.

I saw you release MT5 for iPhone, are you planning on doing the same or are the new developments are aimed only at MT5?

Yes, it’s just one of those differences of MetaTrader 5 from MetaTrader 4. The old platform includes a good mobile trading. However, this market is strongly dependent on the market of mobile devices, which has changed dramatically. The rather good Windows Mobile has been replaced by the even better iOS and Android OS. Therefore, we are developing our mobile terminals specifically for these mobile platforms.

We are going to make MetaTrader 5 mobile terminals even more functional than the MetaTrader 4 Mobile. Increased functionality and performance of mobile devices provide greater freedom, and we want to use it all, to provide traders with maximum opportunities. Of course, all this will be available only to MetaTrader 5 users. Further development of mobile trading for MetaTrader 4 is not planned.

What are your future plans for Metaquotes? Do you intend to organically develop the platform further or do you intend to start acquiring competitors or other vertical acquisitions (like bridge providers, MT development firms, etc)?

Our next plans include further development of our trading platforms and expansion to the Exchange. From our point of view, there is still enough work to do.

What do you think of the rising popularity of MT4/MT5 bridges and bridges firms? Why don’t you develop a bridge of your own?

Popularity is an excellent indicator of demand. That is why we do create bridges – we have created our own bridge for MT5.

Grab your latest copy of the Forex Magnates Retail Forex Industry Report for Q1 2011.