what is the real driving force behind the merger between meituan & dianping?

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TalkingData Data Centre

Mobile Data Digest – Oct Issue 1Meituan-Dianping Merger

2011-2015 © TalkingData.com2

None could be able to take meaningful share from the merged company in Catering O2O field.

With the rapid development of the O2O market, both Meituan and Dianping performed impressively. According to TalkingData’s mobile app ranking of September, Meituan and Dianping ranked second and fifth in the top 10, with the coverage rate at 22.2% and 11.6% respectively.Data Source: TalkingData Mobile App Tracker


None could be able to take meaningful share from the merged company in Catering O2O field.

In Catering O2O field, along with the stellar performance of Meituan Waimai, Meituan& Dianping will promptly leave other competitors further behind after the merge and dominate this section in the near future.

Data Source: TalkingData Mobile App Tracker


The overlap between Dianping & Meituan is very high, the overall user base will remain stable after the merger

Results from TalkingData’s latest report show that 24.3% of the people who have installed Meituan also had Dianping in their smartphone. In turn, almost half of the Dianping’s users have installed Meituan. Since correlation degree between Dianping and Meituan is fairly high, in the wake of the decreasing of price war and vicious competition, we expect to see that the user level will maintain a steady growth.


Overlap/Meituan Users Overlap/Dianping Users

24.3% 48.5%


Dianping differs from Meituan in terms of geographical distribution, so they can learn from each other's advantages in the future development to cover the entire Chinese market


In the geo coverage breakdown of Meituan and Dianping in September 2015, Dianping occupied more first tier cities at the percentage of 22.6%, while Meituan was more popular in second and third tier cities.


Dianping differs from Meituan in terms of geographical distribution, so they can learn from each other's advantages in the future development to cover the entire Chinese market


The Top 10 provinces and cities in their coverage are mainly well-developed areas such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Beijing. By comparing the two apps, Dianping has advantages in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, including first tier cities and postage-free (for online shopping) areas. In contrast, Meituan has advantages in inland areas like Shaanxi, Shandong, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi and Henan. Thus there is a marked distinction between their advantageous places, so they can complement each other in that respect.


The opening frequency of Meituan and Dianping is of medium level. They need to spare more efforts to go up to the high frequency rank.

According to the latest data from TalkingData, only 7 out of the top 200 O2O apps are high frequency apps, including Baobao Shu and Lama Bang from maternal and children category, and transportation apps such as E Daijia. Their average sessions per users are all above 20. The number of medium frequency apps is 71. Meituan and Dian are still at the medium level and need to work harder to step up to high frequency app rank.

Opening Frequency of Top 200 O2O apps in Sep 2015


Currently, there is a considerate business overlap between Meituan and Dianping, but they have different focuses in O2O filed.

Besides traditional group buying, Dianping has set foot in the wedding and cosmetic industry. They also launched Shan Hui business (lightening discounted payment) in April this year, with the aim of de-groupbuying and transformation. In the contrast, Meituan has invested a big fortune to develop its film ticket and food delivery business, with Meituan Waimai and Maoyan film already taken a big market share.

It’s no doubt that both of these two companies need backup of a huge amount of capital, which is also a key drive for this merger. After merger, they can optimize allocation of resources and complement each other, together making its market share bigger.


Data source: TalkingData mobile data research center

In general, the merger of Dianping and Meituan is a request from their self-development in the rapid growing O2O market.

The O2O market has huge potential and the niche market is not mature. Choosing the right ally will allow them to go further. The two companies will have the absolute dominance over the group buying market after merger. With less competition and waste of resources, they will also help promote healthy competition in the market.

Since the overlap of the mobile users is high for these two apps, we expect to see a steady growth in the user base. They can also complement each other in terms of geo distribution. Let’s look forward to the performance of the new company in the future.

what is the real driving force behind the merger between meituan & dianping?

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