| > Uber is displacing taxis, redirecting money to themselves. I lived in San Francisco 2013-2018, before Uber I very rarely used taxis -- to/from the airport maybe. Having moved back to Denmark, I again very rarely use taxis. But when I lived in the US, I used Uber many times each week. Sometimes to/from work. But taxis in Denmark is easily 5x as expensive, and generally unavailable on-demand. So now I was forced to buy a car, and call someone if I get a drink. Point being: Uber certainly replaced taxis, but they also grew the market dramatically.
The taxi industry is just a casualty, the pie Uber created is much bigger. |
From the UX perspective, Uber combines payment processing and ride ordering in an app. Obviously an improvement over calling a Taxi dispatcher and telling them when/where to pick you up. But is that billions of dollars in value? Or is the majority of that value just being scooped up from previous incumbents?
The economics of the industry haven't changed dramatically - it's expensive to pay people to be your chauffeur.