Uber's number of rides worldwide by quarter 2017-2020

In the fourth quarter of 2020, Uber's ridership worldwide reached only 1.4 billion trips. This compares to 1.9 billion trips in the fourth quarter of 2019, representing a decrease of 24 percent year-on-year.

A brief overview of Uber Technologies

Uber Technologies Corporation started as a ridesharing company to disrupt the traditional taxi services industry. Having observed the global lucrativeness of the sharing economy in the upcoming years, Uber expanded its business profile to reshape the entire transportation industry, from food transportation to transport of people. As a result of strategic market positioning, the company experienced a growth path stronger than exponential rate. The net revenue of Uber increased over 113 times in six years, up from 0.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2013 to 11.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. Nevertheless, we must keep in mind that Uber Technologies have a long-term business focus, which means the company invests heavily into research and development process to create almost non-existent markets within transportation industry all over the world. Therefore, Uber Technologies is still far from being profitable and reported a net loss of roughly 6.7 billion U.S. dollars during the fiscal year of 2020.

Competition in the sharing economy

A highly lucrative industry for sure attracts many firms to compete against each other to maximize profit share. Similar has happened in the transportation sharing economy when Uber introduced its first differentiated cab services. One of the major competitors of Uber Technologies is the San Francisco-based Lyft. Although Lyft is a latecomer into the ridesharing business, Lyft progressively worked on weaknesses exhibited by Uber to strengthen its position against Uber and other competitors. Besides, Lyft is one of the major innovators in the sharing economy along with Uber Technologies. In 2019, Lyft Corporation invested over 1.5 billion U.S. dollars into research and development globally, which is an increase from 64 million U.S. dollars in 2016. Following a promising corporate strategy, Lyft generated over 2.3 billion U.S. dollars in global revenue during 2020.