In the evening of July 27, Huawei HarmonyOS 3 and Huawei all-scene new product launch was held online, Huawei Managing Director, CEO of Terminal BG, and CEO of Intelligent Vehicle Solutions BU, Yu Chengdong, disclosed at the meeting that the number of Huawei Harmony devices had exceeded 300 million, and the Harmony Smart Link ecological devices exceeded 170 million units. With the upgrade of Harmony system, Huawei’s strategic layout in the net car market gradually surfaced.
That evening, Huawei announced the official launch of its atomization service Petal Travel. Huawei said that as the first HarmonyOS travel service that supports multi-device flow, the taxi service can be used collaboratively among cell phones, watches, tablets, PCs and other devices. Users can initiate taxi tasks through the negative screen, desktop service cards, desktop icons, local search and other portals, and can also evoke the travel service by voice.
According to the introduction of the launch, Petal Travel is a travel service platform that aggregates a number of domestic online taxi service providers, and does not directly provide capacity itself, with specific services provided by third-party partners.
Huawei launched Petal Maps, a mapping application for overseas users in October 2020, with the intention of solving the problem of offshore applications. The word “Petal” means “flower petal”, so some people also call Huawei Maps Petal Maps.
But the appearance of the aggregation platform is indeed in many people’s unexpected.
Although the map and travel applications are closely related, but from the main players share, travel track has been quite crowded, many people will ask, Huawei at this time to enter the net car market is for what?
From the official introduction that night, Petal travel provides basic life geographic location services including travel, social, shopping, dining, etc. Through indoor high precision positioning, AR maps and other technologies, the aggregation platform model is adopted, that is, very similar to Gao De taxi, Meituan taxi, itself does not directly provide capacity, specific services are provided by third-party partners.
According to a report released by China Internet Network Information Center, as of December 2021, the scale of China’s online taxi users reached 453 million, an increase of 87.33 million from December 2020, accounting for 43.9% of the overall netizens. And according to the national net car regulatory information interaction platform statistics, as of May 31 this year, a total of 274 net car platform companies nationwide to obtain net car platform operating license, an increase of 4.
And from the update of HarmonyOS 3, Huawei’s taxi-hailing capability is different from other platforms and can flow seamlessly among cell phones, watches, tablets, PCs and other devices. For example, if you initiate a taxi task through your tablet or PC, you can view the taxi-hailing process on your phone and complete the payment function with your watch after closing your tablet or PC. This is also seen as one of the important factors to increase user stickiness.
In the previous internal test version, “Petal Travel” has access to two suppliers, Shouqi and Shenzhou, and can support a variety of models such as economy, comfort, business 6-seater and luxury. And in the next, the fast application version of this application will be online in several cities.
And in addition to Huawei, other tech vendors have recently shown interest in the travel track.
Tencent said its taxi service was launched in March and now covers more than 100 cities across the country. Huawei’s entry at this time not only means entering a new track but also will usher in the travel field of the old and new players “the same stage competition”.
From the model point of view, the main aggregation of taxi platform “light asset” model, small scale, small users of the long tail of small and medium-sized car companies have access to the aggregation platform, and the advantage of the aggregation of taxi platform is the use of map navigation traffic, get the order of the car.
But this model also to today’s management as well as supervision also put forward high requirements.
According to the “Net car management measures”, net car companies should ensure that the drivers providing services have legal qualifications, net car platform companies assume the responsibility of carriers, should ensure operational safety and protect the legitimate rights and interests of passengers. In other words, the safety of the aggregated taxi model remains the biggest challenge for the industry.
Some aggregation platform is through direct investment and equity pledge, strengthen the control of the platform online taxi service providers, for Huawei, the future may also be able to reduce the security problems through technical means as well as investment means.
