BEIJING, Mar 21: China's bike sharing industry generated revenue of 221.3 billion yuan ($ 35 billion) in 2017, said a recent report, offering a glimpse into the booming service that emerged since later 2015.
The shared bikes have not only provided a solution to meet the residents' transportation demands with the dockless design and online service, but also generated huge economic and social value.
It is now described as one of China's "four great new inventions" together with high-speed trains, e-commerce and mobile payments.
The industry has created 390,000 jobs and saved 760 million hours for its users, said the report issued by China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Guanghua School of Management under Peking University, and bike-sharing service provider ofo.
In addition, it helped reduce traffic costs and smog treatment spending by 16.1 billion yuan (2.5 billion US dollars) and 1.3 billion yuan, respectively, according to the report.
Shared bikes have already been an important part in the urban traffic ecosystem. Bike-sharing service providers launched over 25 million bikes in more than 200 Chinese cities in 2017.
A total of 41 per cent of the country's internet users used the service last year, and the bikes were ridden 17 billion times. The daily number of riders peaked at 70 million.
This January, ofo officially launched a big data platform, through which it can share information with city offices to improve scientific management of the industry.
The authorities can track number of bicycles deployed, bicycle parking locations and the distance traveled by users on the platform. It opened access to a first batch of 20 cities in China, and will be increased to over 200.
Chinese service providers are accelerating their pace to test overseas market as well. Ofo bikes, launched in over 50 foreign cities, have been used for over 10 million times. A new trend of introducing Chinese internet technologies to foreign destinations was initiated by ofo and its rival Mobike.
There were 227 million users of bike-sharing services around the globe in 2017, according to a global report on shared bikes development issued by mobile internet-focused research institution Cheetah Data.
Asia, represented by China and Singapore, was the largest market of the service, followed by the European market led by the UK, France and Italy, said the report, adding that the service has also been emerging in the US.
The report predicted that the number of bike-sharing users will hit 306 million globally in 2019, and the size of overseas users is likely to expand five- to-ten-fold in the next two years.
Courtesy: People's Daily of China. newssharing_pd@163.com