The sharing economy is about to get more bonkers. Sharing services and apps that use the labor or property of everyday people to fulfill some consumer need are expected to make enormous revenue by the end of the decade.
According to a research report from Juniper, Uber, AirBnB, and TaskRabbit are forecast to triple their revenues by 2020, from $6.4 billion in 2015 to $20.4 billion by 2020.
TaskRabbit, a service that matches people with specific skills with customers’ needs, is the only such sharing economy type of Silicon Valley company headed by a black woman, Stacy Brown-Philpot. She serves as TaskRabbit’s CEO.
Sharing as Disruptive Force
As per the report’s findings, “the expansion of sharing services into emerging markets, coupled with growth in what are deemed more established regions, will drive a surge in returns for investors.â€
Indeed, Uber has been pushing its service hard in China, which is a vast potential market due to the country’s population of 1.3 billion.
Sharing-economy services have hugely disrupted traditional industries including the hotel and taxi and limo industries.
The Various Types of Sharing-Economy Companies
Researchers break down sharing-economy companies into several different categories:
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Transport: Includes services such as Uber and Lyft
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Goods: Includes sites such as eBay and Etsy
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Services: Includes companies such as TaskRabbit and Amazon Mechanical Turk
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Space: Includes companies such as PivotDesk and AirBnb
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Music and Video: Includes platforms such as Netflix and Spotify
-Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Money: Includes sites for lending and crowdfunding such as Kickstarter and Crowdcube
The report states that the next sharing-economy model to take off will be shared manufacturing. For example, if you have an idea for a product or an invention, you will be able to crowdsource the design; have it built on-site by the platform provider; and then displayed on the site to get feedback.
One such shared manufacturing service already in existence in FirstBuild. It uses 3-D printers to produce parts for new products and computer-aided machinery to turn concepts into an actual product.