Many people were able to see Bird’s excellence in the making hardware in CES 2020. The American electronic scooter sharing company, Bird, showed its own products, which are called “BirdOne” […]
The American electronic scooter sharing company, Bird, showed its own products, which are called “BirdOne” and “birdie”, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, held January 2020. According to the company official cite, the price of “BirdOne” and “birdie” is 1,299 and 129 US dollars, respectively (note: sometimes, the company offers the discounted price). The “birdie” is a product for kids so that it is not an electric scooter, and equipped with three tires (two front wheels and one rear wheel). The company started to sell its own products in 2019, and it is for the first time that Bird showed them at the CES in 2020. Therefore, it is a good opportunity for the company to increase brand awareness and visibility of products.
What are purposes to sell “BirdOne” and “birdie”? We have to seek them from now on, but it is true that new own products can make customers know the company more.
Bird was founded in 2017 and has offered the shared electric scooter service in more than 100 cities including Paris, Berlin, Madrid and other cities in Europe. Of course, the company is based on Santa Monica, California, so it operates Los Angeles, Austin, Phoenix, San Francisco and other cities in the US.
According to QUARTZ, Bird becomes the fastest company to reach a valuation of 1 billion US dollars, which is called “unicorn”. Bird needed less than 2 years to become “unicorn” and it seems crazy. However, it means that the market of electronic scooters or/and shared mobility services is growing faster and larger at the same time. This is because climate change is one of the biggest and important issues all over the world, and because traffic jam is also a big problem, especially for mega cities in the world.
Many people, like millennials, are likely to avoid using private cars and to try to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2). The shared electric scooter service is possibly one of the solutions for the reduction of CO2. The generation is more likely to accept and make use of Mobility as a Service, which is called “MaaS” than older generations do. Another important aspect of Bird is that the company raised money from Sequoia Capital, which is one of the largest venture capitals in the world.
According to Crunchbase, Sequoia Capital is a venture capital focused on energy, financial, enterprise, healthcare, internet, and mobile startups. The firm helps a small number of daring founders build legendary companies. Its spurs them to push the boundaries of what’s possible. The company was founded by Don Valentine in November 1972 and is based on Menlo Park, California.
According to Wikipedia, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is defined as a shift away from personally-owned modes of transportation and towards mobility provided as a service. This is enabled by combining transportation services from public and private transportation providers through a unified gateway that creates and manages the trip, which users can pay for with a single account. Users can pay per trip or a monthly fee for a limited distance. The key concept behind MaaS is to offer travelers mobility solutions based on their travel needs. Specialist urban mobility applications are also expanding their offerings to enable MaaS, such as Transit, Uber and Lyft.
As we can see the other article related to the summary of “CASE”, not only software but also hardware is a key success factor in mobility. In this sense, Bird’s product will be able to enhance its capability, which leads to win the competition.
