Well, my local taxi company has had a phone-based booking system forever, they've had web-based booking for 5-10 years, and from that position, making an iPhone

Well, my local taxi company has had a phone-based booking system forever, they've had web-based booking for 5-10 years, and from that position, making an iPhone app is very cheap, it looks like they just got an iPhone consultancy agency to make it, and I'm pretty sure they didn't pay 10 million for it. :-) I don't know exactly how taxi companies work in various US cities, but for any company that already has web-booking, getting an iPhone app is trivially cheap, and I don't see how Uber is going to be able to counter that, funding or no funding?