[jvictor118]

They're not dedicated anymore, its just a program that runs on Windows. You get a special keyboard when you buy it.

They don't have total vertical integration. Rarely do they own the data - most of it comes from other parties, either contributions from broker-dealers or from exchanges. Thats why you have to buy the special data sets on bloomberg. They do a lot of work digitizing quotes but these days its much less important than it used to be.

There are many companies (most significantly Markit) who are looking to crush this beast. Reuters has already failed IMO. But, the important thing is with the fragmentation of trading venues there's been fragmentation of the market data business. Bloomberg is great at aggregating many different data sources, but there are others (e.g. the NYSE) that could provide a great service that is geared towards a specific client niche. I think that's the more likely danger to them.