China Shared Power Bank Market Analysis 2026: Why 3M Devices — and What It Means for International Franchise Operators

If you're visiting China for the first time, you'll likely experience something surreal —

Whether it's in shopping malls, restaurants, bars, airports, tourist attractions, or even remote small towns, you can find shared power banks almost everywhere.

They exist like air itself.

This question can never be answered by just looking at the results. We must go back to the very beginning, to a stage where almost no one believed this could work.

📅 Chapter 1: 2015 — Something That Looked Like a 'Fake Need'

In 2015, we participated in developing and deploying some of the industry's earliest shared power bank devices, placing them in Shenzhen shopping malls.

At that time, this thing didn't even have a unified name.

Users' first reactions were:

• ❌ "Why rent? I can just buy one."
• ❌ "Can it be free?"
• ❌ "Is this safe?"

Merchants were even more direct:

• ❌ "This thing takes up space."
• ❌ "How much can you pay me?"

So in the earliest days, what we did was very simple, even somewhat "anti-commercial":

📈 Chapter 2: 2016-2017: Slowly Gaining Users, But No One Made Money

As devices began appearing in different scenarios, changes slowly emerged:

• ✅ Users started thinking of it when their phones were "about to die"
• ✅ Merchants became willing to try placing one
• ✅ Usage frequency started improving

Until 2017, when one thing changed everything.

🚀 Chapter 3: 2017 — We Thought We Had Won

Capital began entering this industry.

At that time, we were actually a bit "confident," even somewhat proud. Because what we secured were what seemed to be the highest-quality locations at the time:

🛁 Bath centers ｜ 🍸 Nightclubs ｜ 🍺 Bars ｜ ✈️ Transportation hubs

⚔️ Chapter 4: Another Approach Emerged — Not "Selecting," But "Covering"

They were not obsessed with "high-quality locations," but instead began entering in large numbers:

🍜 Restaurants ｜ 🦶 Foot massage shops ｜ 🏨 Small hotels ｜ 🏪 Street-side stores

💡 Chapter 5: A Truth We Only Truly Understood Later

As devices began densely appearing in cities, a change quietly happened:

Users no longer "looked for power banks,"
Instead —
✨ They got used to their existence.

🆚 Chapter 6: Shanghai Comparison — 20 People vs. 200 People

At that time in Shanghai, there was a scenario we still review to this day.

"We're playing efficiency, they just have more people."

At that stage, we judged the direction wrong:

• ❌ Once locations are taken, hard to get back
• ❌ Once user habits form, hard to change
• ❌ Once network density falls behind, hard to catch up

🔄 Chapter 7: The Industry Did Not "Collapse," It Diverged

"Too many deployed, not enough demand, the industry is starting to fail."

📉 On One Side: Direct Operations Teams Struggled

"Not that we don't want to deploy, we simply can't."

📈 On the Other Side: Agents Began Crazy Expansion

Relying on local relationships, personal networks, and resource exchange — even involving:

🔥 Fire departments ｜ 👮 Police ｜ 🏛️ Local government resources

They took the market piece by piece, "eating it up."

🌍 Chapter 8: A Very Exaggerated Phenomenon

Today, if you go to China:

🏘️ County towns ｜ 🌄 Border areas ｜ ⛰️ Mountain regions

Shared power banks are everywhere.

💰 Chapter 9: The Payback Logic Also Changed

🚀 Early days: 1-2 months to break even

🏦 Chapter 10-11: New Players Enter

People from the payment industry began entering — attracted by stable cash flow, replicable models, and scalable expansion.

Then came a much bigger variable:

🦘 Meituan

Before this: Everyone was "negotiating with merchants"

With them: They were already in the merchant system

🌀 Chapter 12-14: Why So Many Brands?

But things did not get simpler, they got more complex — brands actually became more numerous. Thousands of shared power bank brands emerged.

The reason is actually very simple:

🔮 Chapter 15-16: What About the Future?

But it won't disappear.

🌏 A Change Already Happening

People start going abroad.

More and more Chinese practitioners are beginning to pay attention to overseas markets:

• ✅ Model already validated
• ✅ Domestic competition too intense
• ✅ Overseas still in early stages