Taxi software market competition encountered a policy of "compulsion"

Taxi software market competition encountered a policy of "magic spell." On May 27, the official website of the Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China promulgated the Notice on Promoting the Orderly Development of Taxi Call Services of Mobile Phone Software Leased Vehicles (draft for soliciting opinions), and proposed that mobile phone taxi software should be included in the call management platform . Specifically, the regulatory authorities will make 8 provisions on the management of mobile phone taxi software services, information sharing and terminal payment, etc. Mobile phone taxi software must also be submitted in advance for market incentives.

In order to standardize the industrial order and protect the rights and interests of passengers, there is no doubt about the regulatory authorities' strict management of taxi software. However, what regulatory measures should be taken so as not to deny the development of a new mobile phone industry and to test the wisdom of the regulatory authorities? . In the process of taking the taxi market toward regulation, the regulation and maintenance of the industrial order should be avoided as a tool and an excuse for the interest groups to monopolize the market.

Normative order or waste?

Since 2013, mobile phone software has hit the ordinary people's life in high profile. By car phone software, waiting for a taxi users can put forward their own needs, but can meet the needs of the driver corresponding to the orders. Emerging mobile Internet car mode by the emergence of many users and taxi drivers favor.

For taxi drivers, taxi software reduces the empty rate, driver's mileage, monthly income, each single-income growth. According to data from Tsinghua University's Media Investigation Laboratory, 41.2% of drivers think the monthly vacancy rate drops 10-30%, 55.0% of drivers think monthly revenue will increase 10-30%, 48.0% of drivers think average revenue per unit increase 10- 30%. For taxi passengers, the mobile Internet point-to-point dialogue platform, greatly reducing the waiting time. According to the survey, after using taxi software, 94.0% of passengers had a taxi waiting time of 10 minutes and the proportion of passengers waiting more than 10 minutes decreased by 29.9%.

The emergence of taxi software effectively alleviate the asymmetry of information between the user and the driver. However, as a newcomer, the road to the development of mobile taxi software is doomed to twists and turns. Since April 2013, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing and other cities require standardized taxi drivers to use mobile phone taxi software such as "drip taxi" and "fast taxi", and Shenzhen even requires the driver to uninstall it. Evolved so far, that the Ministry of Transport issued a shocked "make up" program. Why a popular mobile Internet products will be squeezed by all parties? In addition to the mobile phone taxi software in the market development process has been enlarged, "fare increase" and other issues, but also more importantly lies in its subversion of the traditional taxi mode.

Taxi software operating mode makes the taxi license control cracks. Taxi drivers have become the biggest beneficiaries, while passengers enjoy the convenience of mobile phone taxiing and the price cuts and subsidies brought by market competition. However, the interests of taxi companies and traditional call-up platforms are impaired. Because mobile phone software companies do not fight with the various taxi companies to cooperate, so taxi software brings more market interest, the taxi companies and related departments excluded. This benefit does not include business opportunities in the future for software-based ad placement.

As the impact of the existing pattern, once breaking the original pattern of interests, the development of mobile phone taxi software is doomed to not be easy. This time, the Ministry of Transport issued a draft release of cell phone taxi software into the call platform, a taxi driver expressed concern: "taxi software customer fare increase is voluntary customers, the revenue owned by drivers, call the service charge is mandatory platform , To 6 yuan per single charge, for example, the platform and the driver is divided into 3 yuan service fee, 2 yuan to the taxi company, 1 yuan to the driver. Now taxi software into the platform, we pick live is not again and platform into Consumers are still willing to use them if they have voluntarily increased their fares before they even have the majority of them become feeders.

Market regulation can not move against the trend

Mobile phone taxi software development course of nearly two years show that the mobile Internet service model point in time anytime, in line with taxi market demand. Throughout the taxi market, since the war on burn-fired last year, the companies "DiDatang" and "Fast Taxi" provided billions of subsidies to drivers and passengers during the competition. Users who use the taxi software even more It is 100 million. Efforts made to alleviate the hard-hit taxi are also obvious to the industry. Waving the regulatory baton is likely to deprive these mobile Internet companies in the process of market competition, the accumulation of technology, big data and other core competencies, killing mobile phone software, a market reform force.

From a technical point of view, regulatory authorities require that taxi call service be uniformly implemented throughout the country. This means that the call center platform will be the biggest beneficiary of regulatory oversight. A unified platform to coordinate the specific business operations taxi company to give taxi companies a stronger bargaining power to maintain their vested interests. The taxi software company developed in recent years, users, the market, the company's core competitiveness will become others wedding dress. With the innovative spirit of mobile Internet taxi software to the traditional monopoly call platform compromise, reverse the trend of mobile development.

From a market perspective, in the past two years, the monopolistic platform for calls and the lack of market-oriented taxi software have already demonstrated their lack of market competitiveness. Taking Beijing as an example, the orders of Jinyinjian Renting and Dispatching Center account for nearly half of the city's orders. In June and July of last year, the order volume was about 14,000. By February of this year, only about 78,000 orders were received and the business volume was halved. The dispatching center chief said Is hit by a taxi software impact. If we continue to maintain its monopoly by means of "unified access and management", it will not only be very unfair to the taxi companies, but will also suffocate the market competition. To use administrative measures to intervene or even replace market-oriented regulation to achieve the so-called norms, which is the trend of anti-marketization.

At present, the number of mobile phone users in China has exceeded 1.2 billion. The high penetration rate of mobile phones has made it possible for everyone to make a mobile phone taxi. At the same time, new applications and new modes such as mobile internet and big data analysis provide an effective way to solve the hard- Also let taxi drivers, passengers enjoy the mobile Internet technology advances and market competition dividends. This time the regulatory authorities solicitation of a draft opinion, the industry is almost one-sided support the marketability of taxi software development, it can be said that mobile phone taxi software is to promote the market-oriented vocation of the vanguard, and service-oriented reform in the general direction, Care should be taken to use counter-trend regulatory measures.

Do not let regulation fall into the game of interest

I believe many people have questioned the taxi software, to what extent can it solve the hard-won taxi problem and change the driver's survival status. Taxi software market competition, projection on the public body is a taxi can be very cheap, or even spend less, bigger, newer changes are still brewing, which is the previous taxi call-by-style can not be.

With the strengthening of supervision, taxi advantage is being gradually compressed. To take the taxi software implementation of market incentives, for example, the draft solicitation of a clear requirement: mobile phone software, car information service providers such as the implementation of market-based incentive plan, should be 10 days ahead of the city transport department in charge of communication and advance to the 5th Announce the implementation of incentive programs and timelines. Once implemented, it will in fact deprive the independent market-oriented management ability of the taxi software. More crucially, the monopoly management of the unified platform will leave the door to rent-seeking in the market, which will be a bigger regulatory loophole.

Taxi software market-oriented competition from chaos to governance, under various problems, supervision is imperative. However, what kind of measures should be taken to guide it without delaying the healthy development of this emerging industry is undoubtedly the issue that regulators are focusing on. Looking at the future of taxi software market, both outcomes are possible: the optimistic ending is that regulators surpass the bounds of vested interests and completely break the monopoly, thus activating the competition in the entire taxi market and enabling all parties to enjoy the dividends brought by advances in information technology and market competition , And gradually ease the hard-won taxi problem. The less optimistic ending is that the monopoly resources of the taxi market are released to the market, the market and power are tangled again, the progress of the new technological revolution in the mobile Internet is blocked, and the difficult taxi ridership continues to drag back.