Broad prospects for the Internet of Things

What is the "unlimited imagination" of the market space for shared bicycles? Observers believe that the biggest imagination space comes from smart locks.

On June 20, ofo announced that the world's first shared bicycle NB-IoT "Internet of Things Smart Lock" jointly developed with China Telecom and Huawei was officially applied to the small yellow bikes. This triggered a new round of competition between Mobike and ofo on smart locks.

NB-IoT (Narrow Band Internet of Things) is a narrowband Internet of Things technology based on 4G cellular networks. Compared with 2G technology, it has many obvious advantages: First, NB-IoT signals can penetrate walls far better than existing networks, and users can open and close the locks smoothly even if they are deep in underground parking lots; second, NB-IoT technology has a connection capacity more than 100 times higher than that of traditional mobile communication networks; third, NB-IoT devices can be used for 2 to 3 years without charging the existing batteries.

"Let me emphasize that ofo is not the first to do NB. We are the first shared bicycle company to truly commercialize NB. We also have nearly 100 NB-locked bicycles on the road for testing." Mobike CTO Xia Yiping emphasized to China News Weekly. On May 15, Mobike announced a strategic partnership with Sichuan Mobile and Huawei. The three parties will carry out in-depth cooperation in the fields of narrowband Internet of Things applications and NB-IoT innovation, which marks Mobike as the world's first shared bicycle platform to implement NB-IoT technology.

In Xia Yiping's view, NB is not profound, but it is still a long way from truly mature commercial use. "NB technology is essentially an access technology. Buying an NB module from China Mobile and integrating it into hardware does not mean anything."

But after NB, there is the future picture of the Internet of Things.

Through the smart lock, GPS positioning system and the database and artificial intelligence platform connected to the bicycle, it is easy to establish a complete "data chain", which was difficult to achieve before the emergence of shared bicycles: before use, match demand and supply data, and realize automatic unlocking; during riding, collect individual user riding data to provide a basis for personalized services and marketing strategies; after payment, establish an intelligent user credit database to carry out precise services; at the same time, through the mining of riding, deployment and parking data, the number and area of bicycle deployment can be accurately allocated, solving the urban public transportation management problems caused by illegal parking.

¡°We have signed a card supply agreement with China Mobile in a district in Beijing. There are only more than 4 million mobile phone users in this district, but the number of users who have opened the Internet of Things has exceeded 5 million. In less than a year, the number of devices in this district has exceeded the number of users, which has also driven the development of the mobile Internet of Things platform.¡± Xia Yiping said that there will be many applications of the Internet of Things in the future, including smart parking spots, which are developed based on the general architecture of Mobike's Internet of Things. The same protocol and the same security standards only require the access of hardware objects. "It will make the universality and openness of the Internet of Things very obvious in the future.¡±

Hu Yufei, vice president of Bluegogo, told China News Weekly that Bluegogo has made many expansions in data analysis and utilization. "For example, we are working with the Shenzhen and Guangzhou municipal governments to provide users' riding trajectories in the form of heat maps to the governments, which can use this as a basis for planning riding areas."

In a recent public sharing, ofo's senior director of big data, Shao Yi, also proposed that in the future, each shared bicycle will be a mobile organic sensor and data collector. They will penetrate into the capillaries of the city and form an organic brain, which can analyze the insufficient capacity in the original urban area's public transportation planning, road planning, etc., and optimize the future planning of urban public transportation, municipal and other systems.

According to the data provided by Mobike, the amount of data generated by Mobike bicycles around the world exceeds 5TB per day, which is the world's largest practical application since the birth of mobile Internet of Things technology. "Mobike is already the world's largest mobile Internet of Things company, there is no doubt about that." Xia Yiping said that many of the world's leading Internet of Things chip manufacturers have opened production lines specifically for Mobike, "Now the impact is no longer on the downstream, but on the production of upstream chips."

Liu Dacheng even believes that shared bicycles will form a super entrance after integration in the future, "Now it is still a warlord melee, and when the market is relatively calm, they will compete for this super entrance."

However, from an industrial perspective, if NB wants to become the mainstream technology of the Internet of Things, it will take at least two to three years for the entire industry chain to mature, "including the price of hardware, network coverage, and device compatibility, all of which require time to develop and mature." Therefore, Xia Yiping said that Mobike will not fully switch its smart locks to NB technology at present, "2G will still be a main force for some time to come."

It is obvious that with the deepening of competition, ofo and Mobike are converging in product form: ofo has become "heavy" and reinforced, while Mobike has become "light" and cheaper. Apart from the different colors, both have begun to use aluminum bodies, solid tires, adjustable seats, smart locks...

But Xia Yiping believes that "it seems to be converging, but the difference in soft power when operating 2,000, 100,000 or 1 million vehicles is still very large. From security to data processing capabilities, and the use of artificial intelligence algorithms to guide the operation team, these have very high barriers."

In this regard, Wang Zhan, president of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, proposed some "cold thinking" that the industrialization of big data operations will not be achieved overnight, and the immediate problem is security. "The cooperation between large platform companies will inevitably create a larger or even fully covered database. Apart from personal privacy and security, the super-large platform after the cooperation has the ability to completely monopolize users and data resources. How can the innovators of the subsequent new Internet models compete with them, and how can they get rid of the risk of being imitated and replaced by the super-large platform? If so, will the Internet model innovation evolve into a money-making game for a few giants?"

Data map: Beijing, golden shared bicycles appeared on the streets of Wangjing, Chaoyang District. The shared bicycles are equipped with charging modules that can charge mobile phones. Image source: Visual China

The ultimate suspense: merger? Or clearing the field?

With the help of capital, the market structure of shared bicycles has formed a three-tier market: Mobike and ofo firmly occupy the first tier, and their bicycles account for 80% of the total number of bicycles deployed in China; Xiaolan, Xiaoming, Hellobike, Yonganxing and other companies form the second tier, which have a big gap with the first tier in terms of market share, funds, number of cities, user scale, etc., but most of them use a large city as their base camp for radiating China; the rest are the third tier with the risk of being eliminated. "Now there are so many shared bicycle companies, the tail companies are unlikely to raise money, and the damage rate is very high, so they will slowly leave the battlefield." Hu Yufei, vice president of Xiaolan Bicycle, said.

In June this year, Youni Bicycle, founded in Beijing, was reported to be acquired by Mobike. Youni Bicycle has 200,000 bicycles deployed in Beijing and has received three rounds of financing before, including 100 million yuan invested by Mobike in the A round. However, neither Mobike nor Youni Bicycle responded to this news.

The wave of bankruptcies also kicked off in June. On June 16, Chongqing Wukong Bicycle announced that it would stop operating and withdraw from the shared bicycle market. The company had only been in operation for five months. On June 21, 3Vbike, which started a business in Baoding, declared bankruptcy.

Several shared bicycle platforms interviewed by China Newsweek believe that they will not be dominated by one company in the short term like online car-hailing.

Dai Wei, founder and CEO of ofo, said in a recent interview with Forbes, "Compared with Didi and Kuaidi, shared bicycles are more offline, and the merger appeal to increase users' ARPU (average revenue per user) through network effects is not that strong."

"In the Didi era, the supply on the driver side could be influenced by price. Uber rewarded 10 yuan, and I rewarded 20 yuan, which pulled the drivers away, causing the other party's supply side to decline. But shared bicycles are different." Mobike CTO Xia Yiping believes that the competition in shared bicycles is completely different from the Didi era. "I invested 6 million vehicles. No matter what you do, I It¡¯s still 6 million bikes. My bike is loyal to me 24 hours a day and will not defect to ofo. This is the core difference, and the service is determined by the supply."

Hu Yufei, vice president of Bluegogo, analyzed from the company's perspective, "Suppose we merge with another bike company, do we take back the bikes of that company and paint them blue? Or do we operate the two brands together? Both are strange. So, why should I spend money to buy a company instead of spending money to build a batch of bikes myself?"

Liu Dacheng also believes that there are too many alternative products in the last-mile market targeted by shared bikes, and the ending of the online car-hailing market will not happen. "In addition to competition from peers, there are also illegal motorcycles and taxis. Once there is a gap in the market, new ones will immediately fill it."

The general view in the industry is that in the shared bike market, there will be less than 10 companies left. "Each user will eventually keep one or two bike apps on their phone. Which one or two will they keep?" Mao Shengbo said, "It still depends on the service competition that returns to the essence of business."

Therefore, in front of the powerful Mobike and ofo, the second-tier bike companies have avoided the edge and sought survival with differentiated strategies.

"We didn't want to be a bike that was parked randomly at the beginning. The initial idea was to have a parking plan." Chen Yuying, CEO of Xiaoming Bike, told China News Weekly that the turning point of the society's attention to the problem of random parking of shared bikes occurred around May Day this year. At that time, Huangpu District, Shanghai confiscated four to five thousand shared bikes and rented a large venue to stack them; at the same time, a large number of Shenzhen citizens rode their bikes to Shenzhen Bay Park to play, causing congestion. Many people chose to park their bikes directly on the spot, thus creating greater congestion.

Xiaoming Bike, located in Hangzhou, took advantage of this wave of public opinion to launch its own parking solution based on Bluetooth near-field communication. The first pilot of Xiaoming Bike's "electronic fence" was in Zengcheng, Guangzhou. "It has been operating for almost half a year. Users know where to park their bikes and go there when they need them. Gradually, they have formed a habit." Chen Yuying said, "It seems that the cost of solving user needs by investing a lot is too high."

Communicating with local governments with the parking solutions that have been implemented and striving for government purchase of services has become a differentiated survival path for Xiaoming Bicycle. Chen Yuying found that the government has three demands: welcome shared bikes; but hope that parking is orderly; data must be supervised and cannot form a monopoly. "What the government fears most is that thousands of bikes are left on the road without warning." Currently, Xiaoming Bicycle has carried out pilot cooperation with Jing'an District and Huangpu District in Shanghai, Zhangzhou in Fujian, and Wuxi in Jiangsu.

The idea of Xiaolan Bicycle is: user experience + multi-channel monetization. "Most people say that Xiaolan is easy to ride and good-looking." Hu Yufei, vice president of Xiaolan Bicycle, said that Xiaolan's Chinese users have reached 20 million, and in March, April and May this year alone, the number of users increased by 10 million. Therefore, Bluegogo also focuses on improving the user riding experience. The second generation of bicycles has added speed changes, and the third generation of bicycles will add electronic screens and adopt carbon fiber injection molding technology. "The bicycle is easy to ride, which will improve the overall operational efficiency. Bluegogo China can handle 9 to 10 orders per day, which is a number that other bicycle companies do not have."

In terms of profit model, Bluegogo has chosen to negotiate strategic cooperation with some mainstream apps, but the content of the cooperation cannot be disclosed at present. The electronic screen installed in the third generation of products is also a new profit model that Bluegogo is exploring. It can carry multiple functions: recommending nearby restaurants, tourist places, navigation functions, and can also superimpose sports monitoring functions, calculate calories and exercise trajectories, etc. In the future, it can also try advertising push. ¡°Just like the precise push notifications by Focus Media and Toutiao, we can avoid simply increasing revenue by fares.¡±

¡°Winning first doesn¡¯t count as winning.¡± Bluegogo co-founder Chen Huaiyuan¡¯s call to the two giants in the first echelon may represent the voices of many second- and third-tier players, ¡°Everything you owe for speed will be returned double later.¡±

(Intern Liu Yilin also contributed to this article)

Statement: Reprinting articles from China Newsweek requires written authorization

Plastic Industry Video