mobile.de

mobile.de GmbH
legal form	GmbH
founding	1996
Seat	Kleinmachnow , Germany
management	Malte Kruger
Number of employees	290+
Branch	Electronic commerce
Website	www.mobile.de

The mobile.de GmbH is since 1996 existing online vehicle market. The platform is aimed at private customers and car dealers and enables the purchase and sale of new and used vehicles.

history

In 1996, copywriter Vijay Sapre and programmer Ralf Prehn developed one of the first car databases on the Internet. In the first few years, the number of advertisements grew rapidly. Part of the responsibility for this was the participation of the brothers Rüdiger and Hans-Christian Bartholatus in 1997, who jointly ran a car dealership in Hamburg.

The development of the company attracted the British investor Granville Baird (London) at the end of 1999, who invested in mobile.de. The company has been in the black since June 2001.

After fees were also introduced for private sellers in September 2003, the number of advertisements stagnated at around one million vehicles. In particular, private advertisers of vehicles in the lower price segments were not prepared to pay for advertisements and used other providers for free vehicle advertisements, such as B. Autoscout24 . Since 2007, the company has again enabled private sellers to advertise free of charge.

In April 2004 the company was taken over by eBay and in the following year the company's headquarters were relocated to Berlin / Dreilinden. In September 2006 mobile.de and eBay Motors, the area for vehicles, parts and accessories at eBay, merged under the new company name mobile.de & eBay Motors GmbH . Since September 2008 the company has been operating under the name mobile.international GmbH . In 2013, the online platform launched offering new cars world can buy, configure, with the prospective new vehicles himself and ordered from the factory or warehouse of stock cars of the manufacturers. On January 1, 2015, the company was renamed mobile.de GmbH . In September 2015 mobile.de took over MOTOR-TALK , Europe's largest online car community. With the merger, mobile.de wants to grow further and better support potential customers with additional information when buying a car. Since August 2017, mobile.de MotorVerkauf has been offering private car sellers the choice of selling their vehicle to one of around 1,000 selected dealers or advertising them themselves. The aim is to simplify the purchase of used cars for private individuals and to provide retailers with a new source of purchase.

Range of services

As a service function, for example, the determination of an average price on the basis of the mobile.de database for vehicles is offered, which reflects the generally applicable daily price for a specific vehicle and is intended to provide price orientation for vehicle purchase or sale. In addition, the provider cooperates with insurance and financing companies in order to be able to broker vehicle insurance and financing directly via the platform. Those interested in the vehicles on offer can also observe vehicles, save e-mail inquiries with e-mail notifications, download sales contracts or call up further information on the subject of car buying and selling. At “mein mobile.de”, those interested in a vehicle can access their latest search results and sellers can manage their advertisements. There are three service packages available for private car sales, ranging from the free basic package to the premium package for 19.90 euros. 43 percent of privately sold vehicles are sold within the first seven days of posting an advertisement (GfK, 2008).

The offer is aimed at both private customers and car dealers. For the currently more than 35,000 vehicle dealers, mobile.de incurs fees from the start if they want to use the platform. In this case, a dedicated dealer website, a special purchase and search form and a "closed area" with additional functions are available. In addition to motor vehicle dealers, car rental companies, leasing companies or manufacturers can also direct their offers exclusively to traders via access to the closed area. In the closed area, commercial customers are among themselves and have the opportunity to analyze their sales activities and successes as well as to process transactions with other dealers in order, for example, to exclude the guarantee.

In addition to German, mobile.de also offers its services in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Czech and Polish. Additional marketplaces are also available in Romania, Poland, Italy and France.

numbers

Measured against the approximately 70 million visits (IVW 01/13) determined by the IVW , mobile.de is the most visited German Internet vehicle market, ahead of its main competitor AutoScout24 . In Germany, more than 1.4 million vehicles are listed on the platform, including new and used cars as well as motorcycles , trucks and mobile homes . Mobile.de offers the largest range of cars, commercial vehicles and motorcycles in Germany (source: CAR-Institut 2010).

According to GfK, vehicles worth around 35.9 billion euros were sold via mobile.de in 2011 (GfK, 2012).

criticism

Using special software, used car dealers can search through the offers in order to be notified immediately of favorable offers and to be able to make a purchase. Private customers are often left behind because the financial risk of buying a vehicle unseen is too high for them.

However, since 2011 Mobile has made a search function freely available via an API . Programming skills or the purchase of the appropriate software are required for use.