Is Uber A Threat To The Taxi Industry?
Introduction
During its heydays in the late 90s and early 2000s, Blackberry was the king of the hill (inqu—). The company led the smartphone market, and as years passed by, they released new phones with updates and fresh features, which turned out to be good. The problem with Blackberry is that they did not focus on the consumer, which turned out to be a very big market place than anyone expected. Today Blackberry is just a name in the history of smartphones.
With the rise of Uber, many questions are being raised if it is a threat to the taxi industry, but from history, Uber is not a threat. Uber is the next evolutionary step in the taxi industry, and anyone, a person or organization who don’t notice the impact of technology in the taxi industry will be left behind, just like Blackberry.
Uber: The next evolution in the Taxi Industry
In our world, the only constant thing is change; everything else changes — the same with the taxi industry. With the rise of smartphones, many taxi riders are better off hailing for a taxi using a phone and letting the taxi come and pick them where they are than search for a taxi company in the yellow books or other directories. This helps not only the riders but also the taxi owners as they also earn more than the traditional taxis (ref2–). In addition to the revenue, the taxi drivers can be able to optimize their time and services using the software (ref–2). Such advantages show Uber is more of a step forward for the taxi industry, and with their focus on the riders who get the convenience of hailing a taxi with just a smartphone and at any time of the day, anywhere makes it hard to beat.
Conclusion
Just as in the story of Blackberry, the traditional taxi industry must accept change, focus more on their consumers, and how to make their services better. Even without Uber, another organization would still have come up with an idea to revolutionize the taxi industry, which would make any person in the industry absorb the change or be left behind. Uber is not a threat but a shift in the way the taxi industry operates, and with time there will be more chances that will even make Uber and app hailing services seem like the stone age. Such technologies include research going on in making taxi-hailing use a one or two-person UAVs, the unmanned aerial vehicles.