Hacker News Reader

Comment by ulfw | Hacker News Reader

Uber will end up being an American(-only) business like Lyft. It’s inevitable.

Australia is dominated by Uber unfortunately, I’d hazard a guess they’ve done similarly well for other countries where the competition is weak.

The only competition they faced on entry was Taxis, which is to say, no competition.

The only competition they faced when entering Portugal was taxis, too. Now there are two competitors more.

Agreed. As someone who has seen too much of the world, Uber doesn't stand a chance in hell. Grab dominated Asia. Turns out struggling folks aren't willing to pay the Uber premium like Americans do.

Grab dominated SE Asia and that exit for Uber made sense as they got a very good equity stake in a dominant player. They still haven't exited all parts of Asia. I really doubt that Uber is going to be a US only business. They still are growing in markets outside US as well. They had 30% YOY revenue growth last quarter in APAC compared to 38% in NA. I couldn't find the EBITDA numbers broken by geography though.

Well, the Uber cab sector is going pretty good in India from what I know. We don't have Grab here, and only a few local competitors which people don't rely on much (apart from Ola Cabs).

I think this was already interesting to see with the host of different payment services which seem to be very resilient locally. Nubank in Brazil, Monso in the UK, Africa has a host of local companies, Revolut in Europe and so on.

There is lot more nuance and regional difference than people thought and I think a lot of companies with questionable business models that bet on world domination will have some problems in the future.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com