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Depending on your definition of "many," sure. I would argue that the unaddressed market for Uber tends to have good reasons it's unaddressed. It's either poor

Depending on your definition of "many," sure. I would argue that the unaddressed market for Uber tends to have good reasons it's unaddressed. It's either poor (like much of the world), or in areas that are very spread out out (like much of the world), or in areas legally opposed to Uber (like, at least, China), or has little need of cars, or some combination of these things. This makes it unlikely that Uber will greatly increase its ridership without worsening its margins. Particularly, I just don't see how Uber can massively increase its ridership while increasing its margins gigantically. Not without some kind of technological game changer. And for other reasons, some of which I detail in my original post, I don't believe that it's going to be first to market with driverless tech that proves to be a game changer.

user5994461 10y ago
Give time for word of mouths, to spread in non-English markets (ie. EU), to people who are not 20 year-old-grew with-smartphone-type. Everyone who doesn't have a car could use a Uber at times. The struggle in some places (e.g. China) is real but irrelevant. Should focus on the sizable markets where there is a chance, given time and some efforts (e.g. localization).
- sundaeofshock 10y ago
  So much to address here. The word of mouth has spread in the EU; Uber already has a crappy reputation there and are not able to steamroll over the regulators there like they have in the US. Maybe I'm mis-reading something, but it seems you are implying that Uber has conquered the oh-so-tech-savy 20-something group, and now they have plenty of room to scale in the stodgy 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 age range. Nice theory, but sort of ignoring the history of Uber. Uber started as a convenient, but expensive, alternative to taxis. All Uber cars at the beginning where Uber Black and the vast majority of users were folks who could afford to drop the cash; lots of people in the 40s and 50s (including me). Uber introduced cheaper options to attract more price sensitive and younger riders. So, based on that, I don't think there is some untapped group of old folks for Uber to go after. China irrelevant? I think most business owners would disagree with that. On an unrelated note... Despite what is implied here, that 20 year-old is no more tech savvy then I; indeed, they are most likely less tech savvy. Hell, I built my first computer when that 20 year-old was just an itching in his daddy's pants.

user5994461 10y ago

Give time for word of mouths, to spread in non-English markets (ie. EU), to people who are not 20 year-old-grew with-smartphone-type. Everyone who doesn't have a car could use a Uber at times. The struggle in some places (e.g. China) is real but irrelevant. Should focus on the sizable markets where there is a chance, given time and some efforts (e.g. localization).

sundaeofshock 10y ago
So much to address here. The word of mouth has spread in the EU; Uber already has a crappy reputation there and are not able to steamroll over the regulators there like they have in the US. Maybe I'm mis-reading something, but it seems you are implying that Uber has conquered the oh-so-tech-savy 20-something group, and now they have plenty of room to scale in the stodgy 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 age range. Nice theory, but sort of ignoring the history of Uber. Uber started as a convenient, but expensive, alternative to taxis. All Uber cars at the beginning where Uber Black and the vast majority of users were folks who could afford to drop the cash; lots of people in the 40s and 50s (including me). Uber introduced cheaper options to attract more price sensitive and younger riders. So, based on that, I don't think there is some untapped group of old folks for Uber to go after. China irrelevant? I think most business owners would disagree with that. On an unrelated note... Despite what is implied here, that 20 year-old is no more tech savvy then I; indeed, they are most likely less tech savvy. Hell, I built my first computer when that 20 year-old was just an itching in his daddy's pants.