UBER may have a serious competitor in the one of the hottest markets in the world for hailing taxi’s and they plan to expand slowly. While CMT and VeriFone have their own payment smartphone apps including RideLinQ and Way2Ride neither have came close to Uber’s popularity with riders. Other apps have tried—and failed—to compete with UBER.
Arro is the name of the app soon to be released that is partnering with Creative Mobile Technologies which control the payment systems and video screens in about half of the city’s 13,000-plus yellow taxis. This allows Arro users to hail cabs through messages sent directly to drivers through CMT’s data terminals in the front of cabs. Uber drivers, by comparison, accept e-hails through smartphones mounted on their dashboards.
The really impressive thing is that you do not have to hail a cab on an app. You can actually do it the “old school” way in person then with just tap a button to pay with an app. Arro may be on to something here. I have always wanted to just get inside a taxi and pay through an app instead of having to “call” one through the app and wait longer when there is already one there.
Arro is gearing up f
or its big New York debut and hopes to eventually launch in other cities like San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Boston. The start-up is still small, operating in New York City with just six employees.
The yellow taxi industry had to do something with the UBER threat as its in crisis mode. The value of individual medallions has dropped to about $700,000 and perhaps less from its peak of $1.3 million in 2013. Uber continues to poach drivers from fleet owners and smaller car-service companies, leaving up to half of taxi garages’ vehicles idle at times.
One thing to not is that UBER has a huge marketing budget and has tons of promotions that Arro may not be able to keep up with. The new app will be released soon and is in Beta testing now. Let’s hope they bring out some good promotions to get us to try it out.
