The Bike Sharing Economy in China, How Can You Survive?

The bike sharing economy in China, how can you survive?

Introduction

When you feed up with the traffic jam and the crowded subway, sharing-bike might be a good choice to commute in many cities in China. Sharing-bike has been so popular in China that both its consumers and operators keep surging. Take ofo, the pioneer in the field of sharing-bike, for example. When the company first introduces its little yellow bike (seen in Figure 1) into the market in September 2015, there are only around 200 orders per day. Within two years, the number of orders of ofo in Shenzhen alone reaches 1.5 million per day (http://www.ofo.so/event/news-7.html). According to Sootoo, a platform focusing on TMT study in China, the market of sharing-bike in China will reach 221 million and the number of consumers will be 17.112 million in 2020, although the market is only 25 million and the number of consumers is just 2.321 million in 2015. That is to say, within the following few years, sharing-bike will experience an even faster development.

Figure 1 ofo’s little yellow bike, “Xiao Huang Che” in Chinese

As for the operators of sharing-bikes in China, there are at least 10 companies fighting in this field with their styled sharing bikes, some are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Different types of sharing-bikes

No.

Name of Operator

Pictures of Sharing-bike

Fees

1

ofo

Deposit:RMB199

Charge:RMB1 per hour

2

Mobike

Deposit:RMB299

Charge:RMB2 per hour/RMB 1 per hour for Mobike lite

3

Bluegogo

Deposit:RMB99

Charge:RMB1 per hour

4

Youon

Deposit:RMB99

Charge:RMB1 per hour

In spite of the fact that sharing-bikes become prevalent in China just recently, it is not something new actually, even in China, but never as popular as it is in China. According to DeMaio (2009), the first sharing-bike comes into being more than five decades ago and the development of sharing-bike has experienced three generations. The first generation started in July 1965 in