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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

Personally? A single fat app. Less fumbling around when I land somewhere to get their localized app, which will presumably only be available from that country’s App Store that’s inaccessible before I land there.

If I have to deal with the airport’s wifi... I don’t want to depend on downloading a 100mb binary over it.

Maybe they could have a local and global version available, but that’s already making it more complicated.

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> If I have to deal with the airport’s wifi... I don’t want to depend on downloading a 100mb binary over it.

That pretty much doomed all these "local Uber competitors". Nobody would start looking for a local competitor, set up an account, get 2FA, register their payment method and then have the privilege of getting a "starting up" screen telling them how and where they can get a ride. Instead they just open Uber and get where they want.

>That pretty much doomed all these "local Uber competitors"

Did it? How much of Uber's usage in a random big city is from travelers based elsewhere vs locals? And it seems like others have succeeded in some narrower regions (Grab, Didi, etc.).

A whole lot of Ubers big spenders. On a individual basis, but I know many consultants/sales people traveling all over the world that spend hundreds or thousands on ubers a month and want the ease of use. Those are Ubers profitable customers buying lux/black cars etc. in addition to many wealth families that use Uber all over the world in vacation. They should be solving for those customers over a customer worried about an extra 50 or 100mb even on their phone

> doomed

Uber lost in pretty much every market where they had local competition. Are there any counterexamples?

Not that it affects your overall point, but countries’ app stores are gated based on region you’ve configured your phone to, not where the phone’s physical location is.

The downside is trying to download Uber for the first time when arriving at an airport. However, I think Uber is so ubiquitous now that it's the likely to already be installed.

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