[ameyamk]

Question remains - if this is winner takes all market. If it is - only one company will survive. As a consumer most important thing for me is to get cab as quickly and cheaply as possible maintaining the basic standards of cleanliness, and politeness from service providers. If quality of service is more or less the same - then I'd argue that the platform generating more demand and supply in the market will prevail and take on outsize market share (80%+). if this is true - then only one will prevail.

[TTPrograms]

It seems pretty clear that it's not a winner-take-all market. There's, what, 3+ competitors out now that are competing on price and service, and furthermore the drivers can switch between them more easily than any other prior form of employment. This means that they're facing strict price competition for both drivers and riders. The infrastructure required is all relatively basic software, so costs are relatively low. As you said, all the customer cares about is "as quickly and cheaply as possible" - all you need is new competitor that drops the cut for riders and drivers (+ advertising) and people will switch. This is exactly Fasten's strategy.

Without fundamental change to the landscape everyone's just going get their margins eaten in this environment. Uber knows this, so they're trying to own self-driving vehicle technology to give them an edge over their competitors. Then they're in competition with the other self-driving technology providers who might partner with Lyft etc., so that doesn't even put them fully in the clear even if they can pull it off.

Self-driving technology and how it plays out determines if these companies actually reach the high valuations, IMO.

[aoeusnth1]

I don't see why people think this will be a winner-take-all market. The marginal cost for Uber or Lyft is nearly zero, so competition should drive the cost to zero. Lyft and Uber are both past the network-effect barriers to entry, so there's no way for one to boot out the other without slashing rates to try to drive the other out of business. Neither appears to be trying to do so yet.

More fundamentally, there's nothing stopping drivers from driving both Lyft and Uber, so there's no reason one should go out of business just because the other is more successful.

[danieltillett]

I have my doubts that this is inherently a winner take all market, but it maybe because of funding. It appears that the investment community believes it is a winner take all market and on that basis it will be a winner take all.