Thing is, I don't use uber for the price. Most of the time the price is obscured anyway. Uber lets me pull out an app, see where drivers are, book a driver, and get an estimate for how long it takes for them to arrive. A taxi requires me to stand on a busy street and wave for half an hour, or call one or more taxi businesses and go through an operator, get a vague ETA, and hope it arrives, eventually.
There is nothing innate about Uber preventing any other transportation system from moving its tech offerings into the present day. Before UberX, Uber was significantly more expensive than taxis anyway (at least for me it was).
You're not in the majority. A former coworker worked for a company that actually did what Uber has always claimed it does -- the app connected passengers to independent companies for a seamless experience.
What distinguished it from Uber is that the connection was made to livery companies who complied with labor law, and they therefore cannot really compete on price and struggle to gain traction.
Products and services fail for a lot of reasons. To start with, customers have to be aware that a competitor even exists before price can become a factor.
Very true. The company's not failing, but it has not yet captured any significant consumer interest. From what I understand, they get most of their revenue from corporate clients for whom safety and compliance and more important than price.
So? Many people claim they bring something better than the existing taxi companies. If that's the case, then they should be able to survive this no problem. If they can't, then it turns out that what they brought to the table wasn't that great in the first place.
