Uber holds out hand, hails another $1bn – mostly from Microsoft Unlicensed taxi service Uber has plumped up its war chest with another $1bn, with much of the latest funding round reportedly coming from Microsoft. Citing anonymous sources, The New York Times reports that Redmond contributed "a substantial amount" of the $1bn, which brings the car app firm's total valuation close to $51bn. …
As much as I hate Uber and the "sharing" economy (ie no benefits including even being called an employee for workers) this may actually be lucrative eventually. Remember the only real value add Yahoo has done in a very long time for their share holders was buying stakes in the right Chinese companies.
A customer who pays, a contractor how gets paid and an agency taking a percentage. Sounds like capitalism to me. Sharing would be funding the agency through donations and passengers getting a free ride from volunteer drivers.
If registering with Uber were compulsory, would that be totalitarian or green?
It is only lucrative if there are barriers to entry. Uber has been trying to knock down the barriers to entry into the "taxi" market all over the world. Where they succeed, they've delineated the exact boundaries in which they - and all other competitors - may operate.
If Uber makes a lot of money as a middleman, there is plenty of room for competitors to set up shop and accept a smaller cut, with the savings used to pay drivers more and charge riders less. It will be a race to the bottom, and Uber won't be worth a tenth of what they are today, though I think eventually they'll just go under completely as they'll stubbornly refuse to lower their cut even as drivers and riders abandon them in great numbers.
There may even be room for competition that takes ZERO cut, and relies on sponsorships to support the infrastructure. Bars, restaurants and nightclubs are an obvious candidate there. The drivers would be the only ones making profit, which is fair as they're the ones doing the work.
I've sort of had the feeling that Uber was rising inexplicably fast and getting its way rather more often than seemed likely, just like Google.
Microsoft seem to be going down the Google path with Windows 10. If what they plan for users comes off they'll know the users' car requirements before the users do.
So I guess they'll go together quite profitably.
Scenario 1:
A businessman gets a cab for a short trip. A screen lights up and with a list of all the dodgy web-sites he has visited. The price of the trip has increased by 1000% with an "Accept this price? Yes/No" button.
Scenario 2:
A politician gets a cab for a short trip. A screen lights up and with a list of all the dodgy web-sites he has visited and a man in dark glasses asks him if he'd like to change his vote on some trade deal. When he agrees he still gets whacked by a massive price hike!
Disclaimer: This is all humour and is in no way related to any real companies.
Sent from my iPood in spaaaaaace! (I'm a floating voter)
Does this add up? How many cab fares do you have to sell to make a decent ROI on $41bn? At 5% that would be $2bn a year, and they only get 20%, so they have to sell $10bn in taxi fares, or say, 600 million trips, and that's after all the costs of running it. And assumes no competitors come along.
How big is the global market?
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