

Uber Is Crushing It in Nigeria? - xfax
http://www.cbinsights.com/blog/trends/uber-app-store-rankings

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stephenhuey
Many theories are being thrown around, but the trend in the headline does not
seem suspicious or surprising at all even though it's a country often
associated with fraud. I grew up in Nigeria and personally know plenty of
Nigerians who regularly travel back and forth between London and U.S. cities
where Uber operates, plus it's the most populous country in Africa so if even
a tiny fraction of the country is traveling abroad, that would be a large
number of people and probably a large percentage of downloads in a category
(Travel) which the rest of the population doesn't use as much.

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asanwal
Stephen -- really good points. I think the breadth of the countries is still
surprising / bizarre. While Nigeria does sound plausible based on your
comment, others like Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Barbados, etc do not have the same
characteristics and so def a bit stranger.

Thoughts?

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stephenhuey
If iOS users tend to be a small affluent subset of the population of small
developing countries such as Mongolia, then they're more likely to be
travelers and downloading apps needed in other countries, right? If the total
number of downloads of all apps is pretty small in those countries, then it's
no big deal to make it into the top 1000, because it might just mean there
were a few dozen downloads of your app.

~~~
asanwal
Great point. Lyft may still be the surprise in this. Affluent Mongolians are
unlikely to be traveling and looking for a way to share rides with strangers,
no? Possible perhaps but sounds much less likely.

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narfquat
It might be visitors from those countries downloading the app via their
respective carrier's app "storefront" while visiting a city where the services
are offered/operating.

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stephenhuey
That's possible, but I do think there are enough travelers in these countries
to account for a lot of the "surprises" they're finding.

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xfax
Hey guys - Farhan from CB Insights here. We're collecting and analyzing a ton
of mobile data (50GB a day, 650M+ rows so far!) and are trying to surface
interesting publishers and trends.

If you have any questions about the analysis or have any topics you'd like us
to look at, let me know. We're always looking for ways to slice and dice this
data set. I'm at fahmed at cbinsights.com.

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sreevishwa
Perhaps the App Store should provide an option to the developers to hide the
app from the listing pages based on a negative list of countries?

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nathancahill
Buy installs.

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gopher1
This is exactly what it is.

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pyvpx
without knowing how the country is determined, how can you be exactly sure
what it is? maybe many wealthy nigerians are in new york and have uber
installed?

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stephenhuey
Exactly. A large number of Nigerians travel to London, NYC, DC, etc, and I
imagine travelers account for a lot of the other countries' stats as well.

