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

On January 17, before the Spring Festival, DiDi reopened channels for new user registration and resumed shelves in major mobile app stores.

(Touyuan: Lei Technology) this was an 18-month rectification period, and new users were unable to register for Didi ride-hailing service or download and install DiDi client on their mobile phones by any normal means. These 18 months are also seen as a window for the development of other platforms, attracting users who are unreachable and unbearable by Didi, trying to win opportunities that do not exist in the once-final ride-hailing market.

Now that Didi has been restored for more than half a month, has it brought new variables to the ride-hailing market, whether the travel mode and related expenses of ordinary users have changed, and whether the income and work mode of ride-hailing drivers have changed? has the former dominant company really come to an end? Several new questions are waiting for answers.

An interesting change that does not seem to have changed before and after the return of Didi is that the search popularity of Didi and other keywords has declined significantly after DiDi's client recovery application market. Combined with the data before July 2021, you can find the results. After searching for DiDi in the application market, users will use search engines to query relevant information, and there is no need for other channels to download normally.

In the 18 months since Didi gave up room for market growth, many ride-hailing platforms hope to achieve significant growth, with Didi's market share falling from nearly 90% in mid-2021 to nearly 70% today, but only so far. Gao de with high penetration of map services and conversion opportunities, eat nearly 7 million daily unit market space, but do not see any player pose a further threat to Didi.

The returned Didi has not changed much at the client level, and still maintains the functional layout of 18 months ago, which can also correspond to Didi's conservative development at the business level. Although a considerable number of users have been reunited after a long separation, Didi has not taken large discounts during the Spring Festival. The overall travel cost is basically the same as in the past two years, and the Spring Festival service charge is also increased.

Some clues can be found at the operational level. The "one-bite price" special express has a higher display priority than the original express service, and Didi also focuses on such services when handing out discount gift packages. Carpooling has become a service that Didi platform outside the express car is happy to show to users, hoping to increase the utilization rate with relatively lower prices, so that drivers can bring more revenue to the platform by one-way travel in disguise.

(photo Source: Didi) judging from the data and Internet popularity over the past half of the month, Didi's re-entry on the shelves has not brought much change, which proves once again that the platform still has a large number of users, and the industry position is difficult to be shaken by later competitors. Mi Store is one of the earliest distribution channels for DiDi to return to the shelves. Up to now, there have been nearly 500 comments, of which about 80% of the users have given a five-star rating.

From the initial Didi and Kuaidi, and then to Didi and Uber, after high subsidies absorbed new users to form the habit of ride-hailing, the head platforms merged with each other, and Didi has in fact mastered almost all the users that can be discovered. Apart from the new user registration brought about by the natural growth of young people, there is no new world that has not been discovered, and the growth of users in the ride-hailing market is infinitely close to the zero-sum game.

Users are concerned about price increases, and drivers are worried that reducing Didi and other ride-hailing platforms will bring more convenience to people's travel, and as we know, when a platform has more capacity, it has the potential to improve the travel efficiency of the whole society. At the same time, the disadvantages of the platform model are discussed by more and more people. The capacity cost of a single order can be amortized, but it always needs a huge cost to maintain, which ultimately affects the price.

Therefore, when Didi once again has the conditions to fully participate in the travel market competition, many netizens talk about the convenience while talking about whether the platform model is infinitely close to monopoly, whether it will lead to a significant increase in travel costs. In the past two years, Didi may be in order to maintain the scale of users, there has not been much change in the overall price system, but the controversy over "big data killing" is still vivid for many people.

This becomes the reason why users will choose other ride-hailing platforms when there is an obvious difference in the scale of transport capacity. after a platform dominates the market with a low-price strategy, there will always be challengers trying to reshape the pattern with price war. Didi's inability to register and download and install creates some resistance and brings considerable growth opportunities to other platforms, but what it really cares about is how to strike a balance between market size and pricing.

As for enterprise customers, the changes in the platform are not important. As can be seen in the professional exchange community, the travel of enterprise accounts is basically based on the contracts signed between the enterprise and the platform, and many Internet companies will reimburse employees who get off work at a specific time for full expenses. they are more concerned about whether the platform can provide enough capacity to travel early, as well as the performance of invoices and other needs.

The advice given by drivers is very different from that of ordinary passengers. Since Didi completed the merger and reduced the scale of the price war, more and more drivers have spoken about the increasingly extended daily driving time and shrinking monthly income. Drivers are more concerned about the benefits of the job than whether they are hired or partnered with the platform, which is becoming more and more like the traditional taxi industry.

Drivers are more afraid of not getting a share than a drop in income. Similar to the working conditions of takeout distributors, the platform system is almost the only basis for how many orders drivers can receive, and there is little room for appeal or manoeuvre. For a variety of reasons, even if the overall income and working hours change, a considerable number of drivers have tried to take orders on other platforms in the past 18 months.

Apart from Didi, the differentiation story is unfolding. When the ride-hailing ride was first born, most platforms were born in a "grassroots" environment, and now Didi has to face other platform challenges. It is not even too much to use the term "pack wolves" to describe it. The head platform has sufficient budget and the ability to prepare the corresponding system, while the second echelon dares to make efforts in the differential links such as price and service, and the return of Didi is still in crisis.

According to public information, Meituan's daily order volume is on the order of one million, which does not pose a substantial threat to Didi, but the hands hidden below sea level deserve long-term attention. Meituan's push team is expected to become an important part of developing the scale of drivers, while Meituan has gained huge energy through the two entrances of takeout and shared bikes, and there is also an opportunity to guide taxi hailing or just explore taxi-hailing into new entrances.

Gao de, who specializes in ride-hailing aggregation services, has been recognized as the player with the largest number of users and hard injury growth in the past 18 months, but not the absolute winner. After eating nearly 7 million daily units, Gaode ride-hailing service has not been able to maintain the growth trend, but there are stories to be told about the transformation of taxi-hailing demand from maps and surrounding services, as well as the more friendly cooperation model for small and medium-sized platforms.

The commercial value of Douyin's local life services also has the potential to extend to ride-hailing during this period. Unlike e-commerce, arrival, and other businesses more clearly, Douyin does not invest heavily in building aggregation travel interfaces like the above two cases, but only opens up the corresponding permissions to various travel platforms. At present, there are T3 travel Mini Program settled in. There are no more plans and development directions yet.

Relying on the platform of automobile mainframe manufacturers and regional ride-hailing services, we began to put more new technologies into application as their own new bright spot. Cao Cao, who has been using Geely Group models, began to launch Maple Leaf models in cooperation with Lifan in Chongqing and other areas, using Geely power exchange technology to indirectly improve the energy efficiency of new energy operations.

(photo Source: Cao Cao Travel) for Didi, focus may be quite important. During this period, Hua Xiaozhu did not see obvious single-volume growth, did not become Didi's plan b, and failed to grow into the sinking market hegemony originally expected. This is very different from the market and Didi's internal expectations of the product, and may be sending a message that Didi, which is adventurous before going public, seems to be becoming a little conservative.

Conclusion online car-hailing is not an easy business. On the one hand, it faces the pressure of safe production and regulation such as road traffic, on the other hand, the increasingly transparent costs and prices make it difficult for the platform to make more profits by raising prices on a large scale. As pointed out by the author of "the Dilemma of Monopoly", Didi occupied more than 90% of the market share in the past, but the loss never ends and tends to an invalid monopoly.

Didi is both a commercial project and essentially a new travel platform, and Didi may have a lot more to do after the return than the company thought at the beginning of its establishment. After rectification and reform, business model and self-worth re-examination, Didi wants to achieve the road to move the mountain, only officially began.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:leitech, author: Lei Science and Technology Internet Group

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