Re:Uber just closed a $1B round of funding for its China branch
by rahimnathwani on Friday August 28, 2015 @08:10AM
(#10134932)
Uber-like services will make money in China. I don't know whether didi dache or Uber or <insert specific company here> will still be around when they stop funding growth with investors' money.
However, car-hailing apps make more efficient use of passengers' time, drivers' time, and cars themselves, compared with passengers calling a guy. Taxis make good use of drivers and cars, but waste passengers' time as they are hard to hail in many places in large cities.
Car-hailing apps are here to stay and, in the long run, some company will make money. Whether any single company will make monopoly-type rents due to being the only game in town, though, ...
While you may be in the tiny-to-irrelevant minority of people in Beijing that use Uber and find it useful (probably mostly foreigners?), Beijing is not a normal Chinese city and in the scale of the Chinese market foreigners are statistically insignificant. I remain deeply skeptical "a car in five minutes" is reliably available in Beijing from Uber in many locations outside of the center of the city.