We own something so that we could use it anytime and most of the time in anyway.
However, if you can be sure you can use it anytime and in anyway, do you really have to ‘own’ it?
Sometime you feel secure when you own something, while sometimes you feel secure when you don’t.
For instance, anyone could have the experience that bicycle was stolen living in Beijing.
Now you don’t have to own bicycle, Mobike,Ofo, Bluegogo, etc. These shared bicycle service provider own the bicycles hence bear the risk of being stolen.
Also, when you own something, you may need to maintain it to make sure it’s in good condition to use.
Like powerbank, you need to charge it when you are at home or office then can you use it to charge your mobile device on-the-go.
So shared powerbank is getting very hot in China. With that, you can rent it at Place A and return it at Place B.
Although powerbank is not expensive, with shared ones, you don’t have to worry about the charging to powerbank. Each time you can rent a fully-charged one.
With this concept, shared umbrella is also emerging.
So this is an era that you really have toown something if it’s very convenient to ‘use’ it.
You don’t have to have a PC with very large local storage when 5G is in place and the fee is very affordable. You can stream most of the contents on demand (you need to pay for some and this is more and more acceptable).
You don’t have to own battery of e-cars. Someday,the battery for e-cars may be standardized so batteries on different brands and models can be interchangeable. Then what you can do is to go inside the battery station, take out the running-out battery and put in a charged one, the whole process may take only 3 minutes. The big concern on finding charging stations and long charging time can be released.
Moving forward, more and more companies will provide rent service and we need to own less and less.
