One of China’s top bike rental apps is entering a new phase. Mobike, which neighborhood services giant Meituan-Dianping gobbled up last April, is changing its name to Meituan Bike as part of an ongoing integration with its parent, according to an internal letter from Meituan senior vice president Wang Huiwen to staff. There’s no timeline for when the new moniker will go live, and the change applies to its China business only at the moment, TechCrunch confirmed with a Mobike spokesperson on Wednesday.
The rebranding is bound to stir up nostalgia among millions of users accustomed to telling others: I’m going to Mobike from point A to point B. But deepening ties with Meituan, which claims more than 380 million annual users who use its services for food delivery, hotel booking and others, will do more good in the long run. The bike service has already been integrated into the Meituan app where users can rent a bike by tapping a visible access point on the home page, giving Mobike a potential traffic boost. Mobike, in turn, plays a key role in Meituan’s ambition to capture every touchpoint of a customer’s offline journey. Last October the Hong Kong-listed firm launched a new unit dedicated to “location-based services” that encompass ride-hailing, bikes, autonomous driving and other transportation means. The data-rich setup will enable the super app to predict, say, where users are headed next after they pay with Meituan vouchers at a restaurant, upon which the app could recommend transit solutions.