By July, major Chinese cities had reached saturation point. There were up to 70 bike-sharing brands with 16 million cycles on the streets for a customer base of about 130 million, figures from the Ministry of Transport revealed in the summer.
Data such as this prompted Mobike's rival Ofo to focus on operating its existing fleet of canary yellow cycles after announcing a designated maintenance officer for each operating area.
Big data analytics technology was used to enhance efficiency. Founded in 2014, the Beijing-based company is valued at more than $2 billion after raising $700 million in its latest round of financing in July.
It has more than 10 million bikes in 13 countries globally and in September officially launched in the Czech Republic, Italy, Russia and the Netherlands.
The company aims to roll out 20 million bikes in 200 cities across the world by the end of the year after moving into markets in the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and Austria.
"Our platform was created with the ambition of improving the environment globally by introducing low-carbon transportation to urban dwellers," Dai Wei, founder and CEO of Ofo told China Daily.
"Ofo is committed to bringing our green service to every city in need of convenient short-distance travel solutions," Dai added.
Back in China, Ofo and the rest of the bike-sharing companies need to streamline and improve their business models.
Many are unlikely to survive in a cutthroat industry. Some will be taken over or merged, while others will simply disappear from the streets.
"Bike-sharing companies should standardize the management of bikes and upgrade their operational capacities," Li at iResearch said. "Refined management will be the future direction.
"But we don't rule out the possibility that small bike-sharing companies will be shut down or acquired by other companies," Li added. "There will be a reshuffle in the market."
During the summer, Wukong Bicycle, a startup based in Chongqing, became the first bike-sharing company to go bankrupt.
It was quickly followed by 3Vbike, which was forced to shut down because of rising costs.
Now, many small brands plan to shift to third- and fourth-tier cities.
Chen Yuying, CEO of Guangzhou-based MingBikes, aims to curtail operations in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen by the end of this year and move into 50 third- and fourth-tier cities.
"It is difficult for new bike-sharing brands to enter first-tier cities where the authorities have banned any more shared bikes from being stationed," said Wang Chenxi, an analyst at internet consultancy Analysys in Beijing.
"The influence on major players Mobike or Ofo is limited, but it's a matter of life and death for small bike-sharing companies as it is evitable that some of them will be knocked out," she added.
