Of course you can but most taxi companies do not want to be in the app development business. And most other ride hailing apps are not very good. They'd rather focus on their main line of work which is transportation. People know Uber, that app works, people would use it if it was available.
The subsidizing is what made them a household name, along with the ease of use.
The other ride hailing apps are in the business of selling hailing services to taxi firms and have sales teams dedicated to doing so, are not despised by taxi firms, and provide solutions optimised for regulated taxi firms. If they tend to provide surprisingly few drivers and poor price estimations and the app companies are orders of magnitude smaller in terms of revenue and geographic spread, that's probably an indication the licensed-partnerships-with-cab-firms market is more awkward and less lucrative than it sounds.
And the taxi firms usually won't and often legally can't use Uber's pricing algorithms which is pretty much the only secret sauce to the app, they don't want to ignore bylaws that Uber has cheerfully skirted around and they don't want their expensively-licensed drivers competing for leads on an equal footing with new Uber drivers.
Yeah to be honest I wasnt even considering the pricing algorithm but just the supply/demand matching portion of it. I feel there is a lot of value there, billions? Maybe but probably not, but I feel this is a huge asset if they run out of runway and need to stay in existence.
I understand that there are taxi companies worldwide and I'm sure they operate different by different types of people, but I still think you're overestimating these taxi companies and what they want.
I worked for a very big "Old Media" company in Australia when we rebuilt one of their key properties. Their "definition of success" was to _not accelerate the rate of decline_ of page views. Since then I've realised that these types of businesses are ran by people who are motivated differently than 'us'.
For sure, I agree with that. My original point was Uber has a pivot that they can use to make money. Layoff most the people, license the software, profit. It might not work for everyone, but it will definitely work for some.
They could be food if they would be willing to invest money and refine refine refine. They are not. So, even if they would buy from Uber it would be for cheap.
Plus any other startup or company can build such app to compete.
Im not sure what you mean by 'They could be food'?
Any start up could build this, but most companies don't want to deal with an MVP and the bugs that come with it, or a startup that may or may not exist in 6 months, etc... Companies will over pay for enterprise grade software if it has a history of just working. This is why Uber has an advantage, software that has a track record of doing what it says it does.
The subsidizing is what made them a household name, along with the ease of use.