Lessons to be learned from the Uber-Didi saga
Updated: 2016-08-08 08:31
By Peter Gordon(HK Edition)
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It's probably too much to expect that Uber had Shakespeare's 400th anniversary in mind when it decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and moved to fold its Chinese mainland business into that of rival Didi Chuxing. Those inclined to economic patriotism might applaud this Chinese victory, but Didi had, of course, the home-field advantage.
Didi was hardly a small company. Uber's size meant it had money to spend, but beyond that, ride-sharing/taxi services are not one where dominance in one market helps greatly in another. While there are network effects, they are mostly local: There are very few people for whom having a single app for both New York and Beijing is much of a benefit. Uber's - and Didi's - services are delivered by real people in real vehicles on-site: They cannot, unlike Facebook, Google or Amazon, be delivered digitally or remotely. Implementations of Uber-Didi services must be constructed city-by-city.
So if Didi could not have seen off a foreign rival, it would have said something disturbing about the nature and abilities of Chinese companies. The result, however, points to a danger: The mainland will, it seems, be left with a single monopoly supplier. This is something for Hong Kong to ponder: The existing taxi monopoly has its problems, but is far from clear that a foreign-owned, unregulated Uber monopoly would be a long-term improvement.
The Uber-Didi denouement also offers some lessons for Hong Kong technology policy and strategy. There is a tendency to lump all tech-related developments together, but a distinction needs to be drawn between those that are incremental - using technology to streamline an existing business model - and those that are truly disruptive, i.e. that cause substantive re-arrangements of industries. Ride-sharing is, evidently, the latter - as will be self-driving cars, which is where these developments are ultimately headed. Disruptive technologies almost inevitably become the purview of large companies: Size is pretty much the flip-side of disruption. It has always been like that: Petroleum knocked out whale oil, electricity knocked out kerosene, cars knocked out horses - and each industry became dominated by giants.
The Uber and Didi saga was also a battle of giants, or at least extremely well-funded inflatable balloons. Either way, Hong Kong companies, unless they are already dominant in some other industry, are unlikely to have a look in. Neither Didi nor Uber started off huge, but both had the benefit of a large domestic market in which to grow and to justify the immense investments needed to dominate.
There is nothing wrong with incremental development: Most things in business are like that. An incremental tech strategy for Hong Kong would be internally consistent and probably beneficial, but it would be dull and doesn't leave op-ed writers much to write about. If, on the other hand, the idea is to throw the dice and attempt to catalyze, support and nurture new disruptive technologies, then it is hard to escape the conclusion that Hong Kong's challenge and opportunity is one and the same: The Chinese mainland.
China is, as Weibo, Baidu and Didi have shown, a large enough market to support the development of companies substantial and well-rooted enough to see off competition from companies that are otherwise dominant globally and also large enough, as Alibaba has shown, to enter and compete in global markets.
China is, therefore, the metaphorical New York of tech markets: If one can make it there, one can make it anywhere. And if a Hong Kong company can't make it on the mainland, which is at worst "next door", then it would be hard to see how it could become a disruptive success in major markets further away. There are exceptions, of course - those based on tax regime advantages or English language facility where Hong Kong might be inside the global tent - but these are fairly well circumscribed compared with the universe of opportunities within the mainland.
But the mainland is still an "overseas market" for most Hong Kong companies. The mainland of course usually returns the compliment in its attitude to Hong Kong firms. Yet this is surely an area that government policy can affect: This situation is at least partly a matter of regulation and official attitude. But it is also partly a matter of entrepreneurial attitude and aptitude. It is fair to say that on the whole Hong Kong tech entrepreneurs look toward Silicon Valley rather than what should be considered Hong Kong's own hinterland.
It is a truism in business that if something were easy, someone else would have done it already. There's no denying that China is a hard nut to crack as Uber has found out. But Uber had no real advantage in China other than money. Rideshare technology is neither terribly sophisticated nor difficult to develop: Dominance comes through network effects in the affected markets. Money, as has been proven time and again, is not everything.
Hong Kong companies are - or can be - Chinese to an extent in a way US-based companies cannot be. And since when has something being difficult been an excuse not to do it?
(HK Edition 08/08/2016 page1)