Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The return of the number one player has made waves in the car-hailing industry, which has been silent for a long time.

The past year has been the darkest moment for the ride-hailing industry. On the one hand, there is a sharp decline in orders in the industry, on the other hand, drivers who cannot make money are also scrambling to flee the industry. It was not until the release of the epidemic at the end of last year that all platforms and drivers saw a faint hope of growth.

However, at this critical time, Didi lifted the ban and was about to return. In this context, players who are ready for a big fight seem at a loss, especially those waist players who are used to being "aggregated".

Compared with Gao de and other "middleman" nature of the aggregation platform, Cao Cao, T3 and other players with Didi competition is obviously more direct. In this context, the current play logic of ride-hailing platforms may change from the initiative to the current passive defense. However, for a large number of "parasitic" waist players on the aggregation platform, the new competitive context is not so optimistic.

With the return of Didi, the inner volume aggravates the present. With the return of Didi, the car-hailing market, which is already out of order, is bound to intensify and become more chaotic.

On the one hand, during the period when Didi was banned, the attitude of the ride-hailing platform towards drivers has changed from intimacy to alienation, superimposed on the industry, and contradictions are on the verge of breaking out.

At that time, in order to seize the window, the online ride-hailing platform frantically distributed benefits to attract drivers, but with the gradual disillusionment of the "fantasy" to replace Didi, the industry dividend went away, and the waist platform also revealed its true face.

As a mother of two, Ma, a T3 travel driver, left Didi because she was frightened by the news that Didi leaked user information, and on the other hand, Didi's various rules and mechanisms made her feel like she was on the verge of being fined all the time.

After leaving Didi, she joined T3 on the recommendation of a friend. At first, the reward for T3 travel was very high, although the problem remained, but inspired by the ability to pay money, she chose to be patient. "once I saw the number of passengers exceeding the limit and took the initiative to cancel the order, but T3 thought I was deliberately evading the low price order, deducted my penalty, and the appeal was unsuccessful."

However, as the subsidy war gradually stops, there are fewer and fewer subsidies, and the threshold is getting higher and higher, and it takes almost a whole day to get incentives from the platform. On the other hand, under the background of the poor employment situation, more and more new people have joined the ride-hailing industry, which has also intensified the volume of the industry, resulting in a continuous decline in the mileage price of the ride-hailing industry.

According to the pony, when she ran one kilometer at Didi a few years ago, she earned about 2.8 yuan, but now that figure has been reduced to about 1.2. "originally, you can get more than ten yuan if you run three or four kilometers, but now you sometimes have to run six kilometers to run 10 yuan." It's not that she didn't want to escape, but how to ask around, almost all platforms are like this, she finally gave up the struggle, just like a victim of the platform PUA, let the unit price sink.

Fortunately, the pony holds a double card, the platform score is higher, coupled with the car is their own, a day to run faster, income is still stable. The real victims of this game are the new drivers who have been abducted into the ride-hailing industry.

We once wrote in "A parting of ride-hailing drivers" that the contradiction between the waist ride-hailing platform and the driver is on the verge of breaking out. At present, Didi is speeding up its return, and if the platforms cannot reach a settlement with its drivers, those who have fled Didi will inevitably return.

However, it is not easy to reach a settlement with drivers. after all, drivers are tired of hearing promises, and if the platform wants to appease drivers, it must come up with real money. And this will not only put pressure on profits, but will also be involved in the money-burning campaign of TongDi.

A Didi driver in Harbin revealed that during the Spring Festival, Didi drivers have a subsidy of 100 yuan if they run 18 tickets a day. And this figure is even higher than in some waist platforms, platforms and both ends of Gaode.

In other words, a new round of subsidy war in the ride-hailing industry may be brewing. This for relatively small waist players, may become a heavy burden, even if the larger Cao Cao travel, last year also announced large-scale layoffs-after the return of Didi, waist players may face a difficult battle to defend the city.

Waist tail platform has no root in the face of Didi's attack, if the contradiction of Gao de is that it can not be deeply involved in the ride-hailing industry, then the problem of Cao Cao, T3, and more waist players is that they do not have a foothold in the market.

At present, aggregation platforms such as Gaode occupy the largest traffic entrance except Didi. A driver told Photon Planet that in some cities, the number of orders from Gaode even exceeded that of Didi. This is the result of the convergence of many waist-tail car platforms. "even Didi can't get an order all the time."

However, gathering is a fire, scattered, but not necessarily full of stars.

For the ride-hailing platform, as a traffic entrance, the aggregation platform dispels the pressure of marketing and getting customers to a certain extent, and only needs to do a good job in vehicle operation and driver management. But in this logic, no matter how many orders the ride-hailing platform receives from players such as Gaud, users will not settle on the platform, but stay on the aggregation platform that acts as a middleman-many rear ride-hailing platforms do not even have an independent App.

Even though players such as Cao Cao Travel, T3 Travel and Sunshine Travel all have independent App, the traffic is dwarfed by Gao de and potential entrants such as Tencent and Douyin. From the point of view of Apple App Store downloads, Amap 2351 times, Baidu map 3.3 million times, while Cao Cao, T3 and other second-tier platforms are only more than 100, 000, such as Qi and other players are only a few thousand.

The difference in the level of traffic makes it difficult for ride-hailing players to make a living on their own without the aggregation platform. According to a T3 driver, even though the city he is in is one of the "strongholds" of T3, orders from T3 App account for only half of the orders received, the other half from Gaud, and other channels are largely ignored.

In other words, at this stage, the aggregated waist ride-hailing platform, due to the lack of independent App or App traffic, it is difficult to precipitate users, and then unable to target users for targeted marketing and promotion, resulting in the lack of platform awareness and user stickiness. In the long run, the ride-hailing platform without independent users will inevitably become a "tool person", "parasitic" in the aggregation platform and become a part of its transport capacity.

In fact, the platform has also tried to get out of the embarrassing situation of "relying on others", but how the industry logic is so, players have to give up hastily.

Take Cao Cao Travel as an example. In addition to pushing and pulling people on the subway and railway stations at the initial stage of Didi confinement, the platform also required drivers to guide passengers to download Cao Cao Travel App-- when they received Gao Te's order, by subsidizing drivers and passenger coupons to direct Gao Te's traffic to their own homes.

In addition, some users said that they got the Cao Cao order in Gaode, but the coupons compensated by customer service after something went wrong can only be used in Cao Cao's travel App. But even if the platform uses a thousand means, the traffic that can be "stolen" from the aggregation platform is also very limited.

The logic behind it is that the moat of the online car-hailing track is relatively shallow, and those who order at a low price and take orders quickly will be more likely to be favored by users. But in independent App, even if players can hand out coupons, they always have to pay for "coupons", which cannot be sustained in the long run.

In terms of order efficiency, players who fight on their own obviously can not compare with the aggregation platform, can only eat at most in some advantageous areas, and it is difficult to cut into the broader market as a whole.

Thus it can be seen that in the current industry context, the user base of the waist ride-hailing platform is still shallow and can not help being controlled by others. Even though players such as byte and Huawei are trying to converge platforms, for many platforms, the arrival of a new "host" just makes it have more say in negotiation, and the essence of "parasitism" has not changed-compared to the giants at the poker table, the roles played by the platforms are more like their hands.

Finally, the spotlight of the ride-hailing industry is shining on the return of Didi, as well as the successive demise of the Internet giants.

New battles seem inevitable, but most ride-hailing players do not have the ability to fight. As far as it is concerned, instead of rolling up its sleeves, it is better to think about how to "gain weight" to resist the impact and survive the new round of reshuffle.

As mentioned above, it is difficult for waist players to get rid of their dependence on aggregation platform. if they do not want to be included, they can only roll with the same kind, or "cunning rabbit three grottoes" to seek more bases.

However, the aggregation platform is not stupid. Gaud, for example, seems to have raised the priority of the "commission-free alliance" by allocating more traffic and better booths, thus strengthening its binding relationship with the ride-hailing platform as other players are entering the venue. The so-called "cunning rabbit three grottoes" may eventually become a dream.

On the other hand, within the aggregation platform, the ride-hailing platform is also facing the situation that there is no volume to be rolled up. As mentioned earlier, in terms of price, not to mention whether it can be rolled over Didi, the current tense relationship between drivers and platforms will also hinder it from launching a new round of price war.

In addition, the ride-hailing industry has always been strongly tied to the local, and after many rounds of war, various war zones, mainly high-line cities, have become saturated and no longer have room for growth. In this context, if the waist platform wants to gain a foothold in the market, it may need to jump out of the area with serious inner volume, take root downward and seek a broader market.

But as mentioned earlier, the ride-hailing industry is highly coupled with the local market, and even if the sinking market is blue, it is extremely difficult for players to cut in.

A small town in the southwest border, because it is located in the mountainous area, the whole city is built on the mountain, people travel almost only on two parallel main roads, the travel route is quite fixed, and local taxis are also allowed to carpool. Locals either take the bus or stop a taxi without having to wait too long. They almost always carpool along the way.

In this context, the local taxi market is almost completely collected by taxis, even though players such as Hua Xiaozhu have tried to cut into the local area by inviting friends to make money and waiting for a car subsidy, they have been unable to reverse the consumption habits of users in the sinking market and swallow the defeat.

In a prefecture-level city in central Heilongjiang, taxis can be seen everywhere, even if the outdoor temperature is only minus 30 degrees Celsius. Separated from it, there is almost no online ride-hailing in the local market.

Even Gao de supports only six local platforms, three of which are taxi platforms such as Ju Xin Taxi and Youe Taxi. Not only that, according to Photon Planet measurements, it is very difficult to get a taxi locally, whether Didi, Gaode, or Hua Xiaozhu-even if Gaode and Didi have raised their prices to the upper limit set by the platform, only Didi has finally accepted the order.

If the ride-hailing platform wants to take root downward, it faces a lot of resistance at both ends of drivers and passengers, and the waist platform is even more difficult to sink. Even though ride-hailing platforms rely on the traffic of converging platforms to encircle Didi with wolf tactics in high-line cities, players can't really compete with Didi in the broader market, let alone replace the deep-rooted taxi industry.

Thus it can be seen that the increasingly emaciated ride-hailing platform has no way to gain weight. With the development of the ride-hailing industry, the market competition will become more and more fierce-the market capacity is limited, the more fierce the competition, the more losses will be intensified, just like a whirlpool, trapping all players inside.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: photon Planet (ID:TMTweb). By Wen Jiehao.

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.