During the peak period of the shared bicycle industry, there were more than 70 brands nationwide. As the industry accelerated its consolidation, over 60 brands successively withdrew from the market, forming a situation dominated by Mobike, HelloBike, and ofo.

According to data from the China Bicycle Association, in 2016, a total of 2 million shared bicycles were deployed in 30 cities across the country; the "China Shared Bicycle Industry Development Report (2018)" jointly released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the Mobike Policy Research Institute shows that in 2017, 23 million new bicycles were deployed in 200 cities nationwide. From the above data, it can be seen that at least 25 million shared bicycles flowed into the market within two years.

Since last year, the shared bicycle market in various cities has successively reached saturation, with many cities strictly controlling the deployment of shared bicycles. However, issues such as low vehicle activity and high rates of human damage and loss have already emerged in various places. Due to the high operational maintenance costs of shared bicycles, the maintenance and recovery work of enterprises is not in place, leading to the emergence of shared bicycle graveyards in various places.

Currently, there are more than 30 known shared bicycle graveyards across the country, scattered in more than 20 cities. Most shared bicycle graveyards have more than 10,000 bicycles parked, with the graveyard in the Tong'an area of Xiamen being particularly large, exceeding 100,000 bicycles at times. Among them, the main reasons are human damage, unclaimed bicycles, and seized bicycles. According to the mandatory scrapping standards for shared bicycles issued by Beijing and Shanghai, the scrapping period for a shared bicycle is 3 years, and a wave of scrapping will arrive in 2020, which will generate more than 300,000 tons of waste metal. The government has not yet established a sound producer responsibility extension system, and the recovery costs are high, with most enterprises not paying attention to bicycle recovery. These waste metals are facing difficulties in recycling.

Currently, the number of shared bicycles of the Mobike and ofo brands deployed in the market has reached tens of millions. Mobike bicycles use electronic locks, while ofo's earlier products used mechanical locks, and subsequent products switched to electronic locks. Other brands' bicycles also mainly use electronic locks. Currently, most problematic bicycles have electronic lock failures, indicating that electronic locks are relatively easy to wear out.

As the market becomes increasingly saturated, the total number of shared bicycles will only decrease and not increase. The plans introduced in various places also involve the issue of shared bicycle recovery. The government stipulates that enterprises can only deploy new vehicles after recovering scrapped vehicles, and the number of newly deployed vehicles is also limited, thus gradually controlling the total number of shared bicycles. This means that the previous explosive growth in the upstream supply chain will no longer exist. However, as more scrapped bicycles are recovered, corresponding new products will be introduced to the market, and the development of the entire shared bicycle industry will tend to stabilize in the future.

It is worth affirming that shared bicycles combine traditional bicycle manufacturing techniques with emerging mobile internet, NB-IoT IoT locks, electronic fences, satellite positioning, composite materials, and other technologies, enhancing technological innovation and creating a large number of job opportunities. If shared bicycle companies control the quantity and solve the recovery problem, the entire industry will gradually enter a virtuous cycle.