Uber: Difference between revisions
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'''= a company that uses a mobile application to find available private cars for people looking for an alternative to taxi cabs.''' | |||
Revision as of 13:55, 7 February 2012
= a company that uses a mobile application to find available private cars for people looking for an alternative to taxi cabs.
Description
Mark Pesce:
"This trip I got to experience a brand new car service, Uber. Designed to work with a high-end smartphone, it is an app that shows your location on a map of San Francisco, along with cute icons showing nearby Uber cars. You request a pickup, then that request gets transmitted to those cars; when one of the drivers agrees to pick you up, the other car icons disappear, and you see that driver’s icon make its way across the map, toward you. It’s wonderful, because it takes all the mystery out of a car service - you know how far away the car is, and how long you’ll have to wait.
While Uber is pleasant for the passenger (it costs anywhere from one-time to three-times a normal taxicab), it’s a complete revolution for the drivers. Limousine drivers live by their bookings, which are generally spaced well apart; hence, the drivers often have some unpaid downtime. Those drivers can now launch the Uber app on their own smartphones, bidding for jobs as they come in. They can earn 50 per cent more on a shift, because they’re more fully utilised. By taking the inefficiencies out of the system, Uber was able to create a rival taxi service in San Francisco with nothing more than a few computers and a smartphone application. They didn’t need to buy any cars, hire any drivers, or lease any office space.
Uber is expanding, moving into Silicon Valley’s Palo Alto, New York and Austin, Texas -- where you can to book a pedicab through the service. As the service expands, taxi companies throughout the developed world won’t know what hit them: Uber (or an Uber-clone) will quietly move into their markets, completely disrupting the business. When it comes to Australia, the oligopoly of Macquarie’s CabCharge won’t stand a chance. This is the new way of doing business: radically more efficient, more money to the drivers, and better customer service." (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/45026.html)