one difference i've already noticed between limebike scooters and bird is in the scooters themselves.
limebike scooters' bells are on a flimsy spring so most of the time theyre broken. the bell is pretty useful for alerting walkers ahead of you of your presence without having to yell.
the bird scooters are also able to 'chirp' to help locate them - i've heard limebikes do the same but i have not been able to find that feature in their app.
overall i dont think this is an issue of a winner take all market - uber and lyft seem to live in harmony and i take whichever is cheaper. for scooters, i'd just take whichever one is closer, there is no brand loyalty or much differentiation but there's room for multiple players atm.
Uber and Lyft are different than scooter services because they leverage the network affects by the availability of drivers and wait times. Scooters could race to cover more districts and provide high availability but this can easily be commoditized. Also, cities have limits on the number of total deployed scooters within a city.
If the scooter companies can get bought by Uber or Lyft, these ride sharing services could also take on the responsibility of distributing these scooters across the city and make them highly available. That would compliment their ride sharing service tho.
limebike scooters' bells are on a flimsy spring so most of the time theyre broken. the bell is pretty useful for alerting walkers ahead of you of your presence without having to yell.
the bird scooters are also able to 'chirp' to help locate them - i've heard limebikes do the same but i have not been able to find that feature in their app.
overall i dont think this is an issue of a winner take all market - uber and lyft seem to live in harmony and i take whichever is cheaper. for scooters, i'd just take whichever one is closer, there is no brand loyalty or much differentiation but there's room for multiple players atm.