Will other banks follow Morgan Stanley's (NYSE: MS) lead and launch more iPhone and iPad apps? The "Morgan Stanley Research App" allows institutional clients to view analysts work on more than 2,600 companies as well as fixed income and currencies, reports The Telegraph. Risk-reward analysis and a variety of other research tools will also be available.

The launch comes as the bank expands its global research team, under Greg Fleming, head of the bank's investment management arm and global research.

We're certainly seeing a lot of banks develop iPhone apps, but most of these have come in the consumer banking sphere--remote deposit, bill payment, credit card acceptance, that sort of thing. But it makes sense to develop apps at the institutional level. Perhaps we'll see more of this soon.

One issue is what platform to focus on. The BlackBerry has traditionally been the device of choice but obviously you cannot ignore the iPhone, or the Android for that matter, which gained some momentum in financial services.

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