A couple of weeks ago, I attended the MOVE Conference in London where there were many speeches in parallel organised in several topics sessions. According to my own interest I mainly attended those held in Smart Cities and Business Models where I learned a lot, in particular, about the direction where the mobility market is going to.
The first major information I got concerns the announcement of the partnership among Microsoft Azure Maps, TomTom (mobility data), Moovit (mobility platform). Together they aim to create an innovative Multi-modal Transport Platform. Taking into account the strength of these actors, the popularity they have and the great international coverage of their products, it is likely that this platform will introduce a remarkable disruption in the journey planners market and, possibly, a change in travellers’ behaviour. More info here .
The second important information I received regards the strategic change of Daimler that from being a famous car maker intends to become an international mobility service provider, something that I couldn’t imagine just a few years ago. In addition, they announced a close collaboration with BMW, one of their major historical competitors: the two car makers agreed to invest EUR 1 billion in Urban Mobility co-venture and started with the Daimler-owned car sharing platform Car2Go and the BMW-owned DriveNow being merged into the new car sharing platform ShareNow that will offer 20,000+ cars available in 30 cities and 13 countries worldwide.
In these days I have also read the boost of the Citymapper app and the evolution of the myTaxi service that merged with Hailo in 2016 and now is going to become FreeNow.
In the next months we are going to see important changes in the mobility industry that will affect our travelling habits and generate opportunities to tailor our journeys around the specific need in a specific moment of the day. I hope that all these opportunities will improve the quality of life and will not create more confusion among users caused by the tens of mobility apps that could become available in the near future.
Stefano Mainero
EPN Consulting Founder & CEO