Zhou Fangyuan said a lot of things today, among which the content about the ecosystem is a state that all large Internet companies are trying to create in the next ten years. It's just that it's hard, and it's not just talking. Even if it is as strong as Tencent, it has a role of one billion users, and wants to build a relatively complete ecosystem, but it has not been able to do it.

For example, in terms of music, QQ Music is very strong, but other music platforms are not weak, such as Wangyi, Xiami, and Kugou...... are all in a market where profits are not large.

In terms of video, it is difficult for Tencent Video to be dominant, and even in China, it cannot be regarded as the strongest. In terms of copyright library, 271 has been competing with Tencent, and no one can beat anyone. In terms of original self-made and anime two-dimensional, Station B can be said to be a monopoly, and all other video sites can't get it.

In terms of games, there is a network of people to compete, and in the social field, it is a dominant company, but in terms of communities, QQ space and other communities are all ruthlessly crushed by Weibo......

Tengxun seems to be powerful, to put it bluntly, the main reason is that the user scale is large enough to allow him to have a good performance in all aspects, but if he draws out a certain item, he can't crush a relatively professional enterprise. Obviously, there is such a large user base, but it is always on an equal footing with other companies in a certain field, and it is impossible to establish an absolute advantage. In other words, Tenson may seem huge, but in fact it is very loose. Obviously there are so many users in hand, but they can't build enough barriers in any area other than social. You can only rely on "big" to prop up the façade.

Ali, on the other hand, is actually not much different from Tengxun.

But on the other hand, no matter what, at least these two giants, in their previous lives, constituted their own relatively complete ecosystems, eating, drinking, playing, food, clothing, housing and transportation, online and offline, entertainment and leisure, basically you can see their shadows in all aspects of ordinary people's daily life. Either directly operated, or acquired shares, even a small shared bicycle, there is the shadow of the two giants competing with each other.

Speaking of which, say more.

Bike sharing, some people say it's a complete scam, others say it's a feast of capital greed.

Anything is fine, but I have to admit that for the two giants who are committed to building an ecosystem, the importance of shared bicycles is self-evident.

Just look at how crazy the bike-sharing was in the previous life.

It's almost a race to the death with no profit.

Before Zhou Fangyuan's rebirth, as of April 2017, the domestic bike-sharing industry had raised a total of 90 to 10 billion yuan of soft sister coins. Among them, the financing amount of Mobike and Xiaohuang exceeded 8 billion yuan, accounting for about 85% of the total financing amount of the industry. At that time, 55% of the 45 mainstream bike-sharing companies in China were established in 2016, and 12 had already received external financing. Except for Mobike and Xiaohuang, the others are in a very early stage of financing. Among them, there are 6 projects supported or funded by the government and public institutions. The bicycle delivery points are mainly concentrated in six first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, and Pengcheng, and most importantly, the yield of these bicycles is basically negative.

According to a database, as of April 2017, the domestic bike-sharing industry had raised a total of 9 billion to 10 billion yuan. However, according to the "potential investment" calculations of major investment banks, by 2020, the market revenue of the domestic bike-sharing industry can reach up to 900 to 100 billion yuan per year. However, after deducting production costs, theft and disappearance, operation and maintenance, maintenance improvement, marketing, enterprise operating costs, subsidies for new vehicles, three-year scrapping of vehicles, and potential policy management risks, the existing business model shows that the return rate of a bicycle is almost negative, and it still faces great challenges.

It's almost a race to the death with no profit.

However, in the case that everyone with a discerning eye knows, at the end of 16 years, Xiaohuang Bicycle Sharing announced a Series C financing of 130 million US dollars. Then, at the beginning of '17, Mobike announced a Series D financing of $215 million, and more than 30 investors participated in the investment of shared bicycles, including Tencent, Didi, Xiaomi, Sequoia, Qiming, Bertelsmann, Yueyue, Panda, Vertex and Sinovation Works. It has only been less than two years since the bike-sharing was listed, but it has already experienced 5 rounds of financing, which is comparable to the special car financing war of the year.

With the crazy injection of capital, Mobike's marketing level is also varied, to advocate green travel to the World Earth Day "a gift", united with government departments, organized World Car Free Day activities, filmed environmental protection promotional videos, beautiful founders frequently appeared on camera to talk about entrepreneurial feelings, and even many celebrity investors in the circle have used publicity to greatly increase Mobike's popularity. The peer Xiaohuang shared bicycles are not to be outdone, and the investor Lao Zhu is even following the example of Wang Gongquan's elopement to make a Weibo bet "Make a bet! If Xiaohuang can surpass Mobike within the year, Panda partner Guomao will ride naked", but the 90-day reshuffle declaration of sharing bicycles was finally determined to be a show.

At the same time, the open and secret battle between Mobike and Xiao Huang has also become a landscape, as if returning to the 11-year Thousand Regiments War, and the public relations advertorials attacking each other can be so straightforward and blatant.

At that time, the popularity of bicycle sharing had not only become a topic of discussion on the success of a business model, but also a kind of social complaint in civil dispute cases. For example, the question of who will compensate for the loss caused by a user riding a shared bicycle in Yudu has also been put on the agenda. Accident identification to compensation is not a day or two can be solved, a small bicycle behind the problem hidden too many hidden dangers. According to the "Central Plains Business Daily", Mr. Zhang used Xiao Huang to be asked for parking fees by the "car watcher", and when he used Xiao Huang to scan the code to unlock the lock again after paying the parking fee, he was mistaken for a car thief by others, and the police were pulled to the police station to explain that he was released for half a day.

In addition to the above, shared bicycles have been artificially damaged, parked indiscriminately and occupy public resources, refunds are difficult, and the experience is not good.

Whether the delicacy carved by capital can withstand the beating of real society and user experience is a question that makes people think deeply.

For example, the founder of Mobike put forward several requirements for Mobike: first, solid tires, no need to worry about punctures; Second, there is no chain, so you don't have to worry about dropping the chain; Third, the body should be all aluminum, so you don't have to worry about rust. Such a requirement leads to the production cost of a bicycle as high as 3,000 yuan, if a year to put 10 million bicycles in major cities across the country, that is 30 billion production costs, plus their repair, testing, maintenance, how high the cost is? business model is so heavy, and the profit model is to charge a bicycle 1-2 yuan of car rental fees, this is not the whim of the capital of adolescent obscenity and what is it?

The CEO of Mobike once said that we don't know how to make money now, and the high cost and low price make the bike-sharing project look like "doing public welfare". Public welfare is not something that anyone can do, and public welfare under the operation of capital is very likely to become a rat crossing the street, and everyone shouts and beats it. In terms of the user's experience, more than 1 kilometer of road travel by bus, taxi, subway, less than 1 kilometer, isn't it better to walk on two legs?

In addition to the two well-known companies Mobike and Xiaohuang, there are also unknown small brands such as hellobike, Xiaobai, Xiaoming, Youbai, Qibei, and other unknown small brands of shared bicycles. For Mobike and Xiaohuang, capital is their big boss, forced by profit pressure, and finally the old way of merger.

In fact, what are their results?

Those who are already dead will not be said, they are all dead, what else is there to say.

Just before Zhou Fangyuan's rebirth, in the middle of 18 years, the exposure of news about Mobike's sale of Meituan and Xiaohuang's acquisition caused many speculations in the industry. This basically means that the bike-sharing giants will "fall" and the industry landscape will change again. It can be said that when the shared bicycle enters the second half, the market will torture the viability of the enterprise more, especially with the continuous entry of the bigwigs, "selling out" or becoming the ultimate fate of the shared bicycle company.

More than a year ago, shared bicycles appeared and quickly changed the way people traveled, focusing on the bicycle as the core, sharing as the strategy, effectively solved the problem of the "last mile" of travel, and greatly changed people's travel pattern. The amazing opening attracted the attention of capital, and the bike-sharing companies represented by Xiaohuang and Mobike also successfully obtained multiple rounds of financing. However, due to the low barrier to entry, scale and capital have become the only barriers to competition. In this case, bike-sharing companies have sprung up. After savage growth, capital fighting, and money burning, the market gradually returned to reason and gradually cooled down, forced by the double high cost of loss and operation, coupled with the departure of angel investment, shared bicycles entered the second half.

At the same time, with the withdrawal of many second-tier shared bicycles such as Wukong Bicycle, 3Vbike, Xiaolan, and Cool Ride, people's conjectures about the final pattern of the market are: Orange (Mobike) and Huang (Xiaohuang) Zhidou, two dominance or merger.

However, it should be reminded that Harrow Bicycle holds the capital and has the support of Ali, restricts users with "credit value", and alleviates the pain points of the industry by reducing vehicle loss and maintenance and operating costs, which is worthy of reference for the industry; In fact, at this juncture, if the two join forces, the final market pattern of shared bicycles is likely to become a unified situation.

Bicycle sharing is known as one of the new "four major inventions" of the contemporary era, in just over a year, from a monopoly, a number of contentions, and then to the tide of mergers and acquisitions, which is the market to return to rationality, the industry to mature inevitable. In order to occupy a place in the future market structure, enterprises must have a good operating model and sustainable operation strategy. The author believes that for bike-sharing companies, it is the king to improve service quality, build a good reputation, examine their own operational problems, and think about breaking through industry barriers.

At the time, bike-sharing was still a triumvirate affair. Capital has returned to rationality, the tuyere has passed, and profit has become the first priority for the survival of enterprises. "Loss and operation are the two major problems faced by shared bicycles", according to industry insiders: the loss of some shared bicycles is as high as 30-50%. The high wear and tear and high operation and maintenance costs make it difficult for enterprises to sustain themselves by riding rentals alone. In the early days, investing in shared bicycles focused on the cash flow generated by the deposit, but the deposit implied the risk of accumulation and withdrawal at any time, and it was difficult for the shared bicycle to survive on this profit.

The data shows that bicycle-sharing companies are basically in a non-profit or loss-making state. Mobike lost an average of nearly 300 million yuan a month, with a loss of 650 million yuan in December 2017 alone.

Under the pressure of the problem of "profitability", "being acquired" and "selling" have become the ways for bike-sharing companies to continue to survive. For example, Meituan's acquisition of Mobike was intended to be used as a functional supplement to Meituan's map scene and a source for obtaining a large amount of data, while in the case of Xiaohuang's acquisition, the acquirer was more interested in Xiaohuang's huge user base in order to supplement and improve its business. It can be seen that if the bike-sharing company does not want to be acquired, exploring a sustainable profit model is the fundamental solution to the problem.

And when the market returns to rationality, price wars are no longer so important. When Mobike and Xiaohuang stopped fighting for prices, it was also seen as a signal that bike-sharing companies had shifted from simple capital fighting to exploring profit models. Where will the game of shared bicycles go in the second half, whether it is backed by a big tree, or with the help of capital, or independent operation, it will not be a money-burning game, but towards the integration era of "interdependence and business complementarity".

So in the end, Ali and Teng Xun won.

With the passage of time, Xiaolan, Cool Ride, Wukong and other bike-sharing companies have fallen one after another, and the shared bicycle market in the red sea has become much quieter, just like the color change of hello bicycles, the red sea has become a blue ocean, and the hello Xiaobai bicycle, which was once in the worst condition, suddenly became one of the most promising in the shared bicycle industry after changing color.

With the strong capital injection of Ali and the capital wrestling of the Tencent system, such competition will become relaxed in the future, and the sharing of bicycles will be standardized and regionalized, and the sharing of bicycles will make great efforts to focus on the development of bicycle-sharing services in their own advantageous cities and regions. Is Xiao Huang really finished? Zhou Fangyuan didn't know very well, because he couldn't see the final outcome of the other party, but he knew that Xiaobai's innate advantage would be the same color as him, slowly eroding the market with his own blue and white protective color in the blue of the shared bicycle. After all, it's good to enjoy the shade with your back against a big tree, but it's Brother Ma standing behind you!

In the same way, the green orange of the Tengxun system has gradually shown its fangs, and Zhou Fangyuan can foresee that the future shared bicycle market will inevitably be dominated by these two companies, and others, even if they are, can only be leftovers.

It can be seen how important the completion of the ecosystem is, and the two giants, for such an almost impossible to make a profit, finally ended up in person and ended up with a foregone conclusion.