It is well known, on the Internet, the winner wins the whole bet. It’s been over twenty years that Americans have theorized the Winner-Take-All Society. A society in which the dominant, the star, and crushes the competition thanks to the network effect and globalization.
In the world of large Internet platforms, such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, but also Netflix, Uber or Spotify, the performance increases with the scale. The more one is bigger, we win users and the more one eliminates the competition. The withdrawal of Asia for Uber, announced this Monday, march 26, provides, in regard to a denial scathing this beautiful theory.
A year ago, Uber was still a start-up in the richest country in the world, with nearly $ 60 billion valuation, the most powerful with a number one position in north America and Europe, of large ambitions in Asia, and the only one in the whole world, from Jakarta to Rio, from San Francisco to Paris. Today, its position has radically changed.
In a difficult position
Its withdrawal from South-East Asia, with the sale of its activities in the region in singapore Grab, following his departure from China in 2016, Russia in 2017. And observers expect the same thing in India, where the company is in a difficult position.
There are three reasons for this disarray. Firstly, Uber, unlike Facebook or Google, is not only a computing platform. Half of its costs is made up by the compensation of drivers who, themselves, must pay the costs of their automobile. On 11 billion of turnover achieved in 2017, the company has kept $ 2.2 billion. And to introduce on the market of taxis fiercely guarded by strong corporations, she had to break the price.
In a result, it has lost $ 4.5 billion last year. The relevance of its model, the” ubérisation ” of the economy, therefore remains to prove,…
