Mobility Apps Have a Long Road Ahead to Mass Adoption

While Uber may not have made a lot of positive headlines lately, the company’s rise to fame over the past few years has been nothing short of impressive. Having started with an app that allowed customers to hail a black car as a more luxurious taxi alternative, UberX, the company’s peer-to-peer ride-hailing service it is now mainly known for, really struck a nerve with customers when it was launched in 2012. Calling an Uber quickly became the cool way to get from A to B among the young, urban, tech-savvy crowd. Uber is currently valued at $68 billion, making it by far the most valuable unicorn company in the world.

While the use of mobility apps may be the norm in cities such as San Francisco or New York, there is still a lot of room for growth for services such as Uber around the world. As our chart illustrates, the adoption rate of mobility apps is still below 50 percent in most markets. In the United States, only 30 percent of the population aged 14-65 has used an app to hail, share or rent a ride, according to a survey conducted by Dalia Research.