“Uber hasn’t officially responded to the news that Apple hasinvested $1 billion in its Chinese rival, but a jokey tweet by the U.S. taxi app’s boss [Travis Kalanick] about his girlfriend, shows he is at least ready to make light of the situation.,” Arjun Kharpal reports for CNBC.
“The investment will most likely not be welcome news for Uber which has been struggling in China,” Kharpal reports. “In February, the ride hailing app said it’s losing over $1 billion a year in the world’s second-largest economy. Didi claims to have an 87 percent market share and is backed by some of China’s biggest internet giants including Alibaba and Tencent.”
Kalanick’s tweet:
girlfriend owns @apple shares which makes her a didi investor… #Smh #ridesharewars #domesticissues #thanksALotTim
— travis kalanick (@travisk) May 13, 2016
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Funny.
SEE ALSO:
Things to know about China’s Didi, Apple’s latest $1 billion investment – May 13, 2016
Apple invests $1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing – May 12, 2016
Screw Uber and Lyft. Frankly they need more competition and they act like mafia thugs. I got to witness their bs tactic play out here in Austin where they called a vote since they didn’t want to be subjected to fingerprint checks for drivers. When they lost the election, they immediately turned off service in Austin screwing over their own drivers and customers even though they could of kept operating until 2017. Spoiled brats and bring on more competitors.
AustinX,
I applaud Uber and Lyft. When the overreach of government rears its ugly head, we have to stop rolling over and taking it. The people of Austin have to hold the correct people accountable, which is their city government.
What are you talking about?
The _people_ voted in a public referendum to maintain the City Council’s requirement of fingerprint background checks to check drivers for dangerous criminal backgrounds.
Government overreach, my ass.
Then, after spending millions to buy out the people, the people voted against Uber and Lyft operating with impunity, so they said “Waa! We’re taking our ball and going home! Who cares if that means abandoning our customers and drivers!”
Unfortunately, the battle isn’t over. After spending on the order of $9MM while failing to buy the Austin election (for comparison, that is twice the spending by all the candidates in the last mayoral election), the Uber/Lyft coalition is moving on to the Texas Legislature.
They have already acquired or bought sponsors who are pushing bills that would preempt all local regulations (the same approach used in North Carolina against the Charlotte equal rights ordinance). Ordinances approved by city councils would be replaced by rules essentially written by the “ridesharing” companies, which argue that running a computerized records check on somebody who claims he is John Smith is better than getting his fingerprints to confirm that he actually IS John Smith. Apparently, people who commit identity theft don’t pose a risk of other crimes.
The Uber/Lyft lobby will be spectacularly well funded (if they can spend so much in one city, how much to buy an entire state?). Even if you don’t live in Texas, expect a similar pile of money to arrive in your state, provincial, or national capital.
Agreed Larry.
And, apparently they could have kept operating indefinitely. They just needed to fingerprint their Austin drivers, which they already DO in some other cities.
So, they had a hissy-fit and screwed over their customers and drivers when the people of Austin didn’t let them have their way.
(Don’t get me started on the “gig economy”, though.)
Here is a crazy idea as to why Apple made this investment.
Maybe Apple’s car project is not aimed at individual ownership but at the Didi, Uber, Lyft type market – at least initially. They could sell thousands of vehicles without the showroom infrastructure.
And Apple is slowly but surely over the last decade moving more and more of its operations “offshore.”
This is about developing the self driving car. Uber is working on one and so is Apple.