Introduction
Ride sharing services have rapidly gained popularity over the last few years. In fact, it’s estimated that 54{a5ecc776959f091c949c169bc862f9277bcf9d85da7cccd96cab34960af80885} of people in the U.S. have used ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft at least once in the past 12 months. The popularity of ride sharing is due to the convenience factor alone: no more searching for parking, no more waiting outside in bad weather (or inside if it’s raining), and you don’t even have to talk with anyone! Of course, taxi companies must be worried about this growing competition—but how worried should they be? Let’s take a look at some numbers on ride sharing:
Percent of people who have used ride-sharing services.
Ride sharing is a fast-growing market, but it’s not yet a mature or profitable one. As ride sharing continues to grow and evolve, we’ll see the industry continue to change and adapt to new technology.
Number of consumers using the top ride-sharing apps.
How many users a ride-sharing app has is important, but it’s also important to know how many people are actually using the service.
Ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft have millions of users. However, not all those users are active on a daily basis.
For example, in March 2019 Uber had over 100 million monthly active riders worldwide–but only about 1 million were in the U.S., according to data from Second Measure (a research firm).
Number of rides per month per app user.
The number of rides per month per app user.
The average revenue per user for each company.
The percent of people who have used ride-sharing services, according to Nielsen and Statista data for 2018, which was presented by CNBC in their article “Ride-hailing apps: Which ones are used most?”.
The number of consumers using the top ride-sharing apps around the world as of December 2018: Uber has 2 billion monthly active users; Lyft has 700 million monthly active users; Didi Chuxing (China) has 500 million active users; Ola (India) has 100 million active users; Grab Taxi (Southeast Asia) had 80 million active users at its peak in 2017 but later lost much ground because it couldn’t compete with other operators like Go Jek Indonesia (now part of SoftBank Group Corp).
Average revenue per user for each company.
Uber is the most profitable, but Lyft is catching up. Uber has the highest revenue per user, but Lyft has a higher number of users.
Lyft has more users than taxis and is growing faster than any other ride-hailing service in North America.
Ride Sharing services are growing quickly, but taxi companies should not be too concerned yet.
While ride sharing services are growing quickly, taxi companies should not be too concerned yet. The ride sharing industry is still a small part of the overall transportation industry and it’s still in its infancy. As such, it would be premature to say that this is an existential threat to taxis or other forms of public transportation.
Conclusion
Ride sharing services are growing quickly, but taxi companies should not be too concerned yet. Ride sharing services are a great option for people who need a ride and don’t have access to one otherwise. The ease of use and convenience of these apps is what makes them so popular among consumers today. However, there are still some limitations with this type of service that could prevent it from completely replacing taxis in the future such as safety concerns and lack of availability at certain times when needed most urgently by riders (like during emergencies).
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