Chinese ride hailing app Didi Chuxing is in talks to take over Ofo as the bike-sharing start-up bleeds cash in the cut-throat sector. 中国叫车应用滴滴出行正就收购Ofo进行谈判,该共享单车初创企业正在竞争激烈的行业中大把烧钱。 Once one of the fastest-growing fads in China, dockless bike-sharing companies proliferated over the past couple of years and expanded rapidly across the globe. 共享单车曾经是中国增长最快的风尚之一,过去几年无桩式共享单车企业像雨后春笋般涌现,并在全球快速扩张。 However, the fight for market share led rival groups to burn through vast sums of money and after some fell by the wayside, the sector has now been reduced to two companies: Alibaba-backed Ofo and Mobike, which was bought this year by food delivery and services company Meituan Dianping. 然而,为争夺市场份额,相互竞争的企业烧掉了巨额资金,在一些公司倒闭后,现在该行业仅剩下两家主要企业:阿里巴巴支持的Ofo以及摩拜单车,后者今年被送餐和在线服务集团美团点评收购。 Vandalism, theft and poorly maintained bikes have added to the tales of woe, along with "bike graveyards" in cities across the nation. 自行车被人为毁坏、被盗和保养不善,以及全国各城市的“自行车墓地”,让共享单车行业的处境雪上加霜。
Ofo has been forced to retreat from an ambitious overseas push, unable to keep up with the spending of Mobike, which recently waived all Chinese users' deposits in an effort to push out other players. Ofo无法跟上摩拜的烧钱步伐,被迫放弃了雄心勃勃的海外扩张。为将其他竞争对手挤出市场,摩拜最近退还了所有中国用户的押金。 Last week, Chinese media reported that Ofo faced losing access to 3m of its bicycles after an anonymous supplier, which made its smart locks, threatened to "freeze" those locks if Ofo kept delaying its payments to the supplier. 上周,中国媒体报道称,一家匿名的Ofo智能锁供应商威胁称,如果该公司继续拖延付款,将“冻结”这些锁,这将导致300万辆Ofo自行车无法使用。 "We already have a resolution for the problem of the service fees, that we are in the middle of implementing," Ofo said. "There is no 'frozen lock' problem." Ofo方面对此表示:“关于服务费问题,我们已经有了解决方案,正在实施中。不存在'冻结锁'的问题。” Didi, which already holds a stake in Ofo, has previously ended cash-burning competition by buying its rivals -- including the Chinese operations of Uber, which it acquired in 2016 in return for a 20 per cent stake. 已持有Ofo部分股权的滴滴,此前已通过收购竞争对手--包括优步(Uber)的中国业务(滴滴于2016年收购了这项业务,作为交换,优步获得滴滴20%的股份)--结束了烧钱竞争。