Apple's investment in Didi was an unpleasant surprise for Uber management

This week it became known that Apple invested $ 1 billion in Uber’s Chinese rival Didi Chuxing, the largest company in the local market segment. These investments did not go unnoticed by the management of Uber, which took them very negatively.

“My girlfriend owns Apple shares, which makes her an investor Didi #Great Thanks to TimCook,” Travis Kalanik wrote on Twitter.

With this sarcastic message, Kalanik once again showed how important for Uber is the war for the Chinese market, which the startup still loses in comparison with Didi. The Chinese market due to the rapid growth of the middle class and the economy over the past decade has remained attractive to various companies due to the huge growth potential. In the case of China, Uber has to spend $ 1 billion to develop a startup in the local market.
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“If we take the 30 most profitable cities for today, they generate $ 1 billion of profit per year. And this profit continues to grow every year, and this is only our top 30 cities. So we can continue to invest in development in the Chinese market in the long term, ”said Kalanik in an interview with Reuters.

But Apple’s investment in Didi emphasizes Uber’s isolation on the international market — as long as large automakers enter into partnerships with joint-use start-ups, Uber prefers to remain completely independent. For automakers such partnerships are crucial - in recent years, consumers are increasingly switching to a shared consumption model, and various IT companies are developing unmanned vehicles that can completely change the model of buying and using cars in the future.

So, General Motors has teamed up with Lyft, and the latter has teamed up with Didi in the Asian market, along with other companies Ola and Grab. Even Google is teaming up with Ford, while Daimler and BMW are in talks about a potential collaboration with Apple. And now Apple has announced a partnership with Didi in the amount of $ 1 billion.

In this situation, the Uber with the lack of partnerships with large companies looks not only isolated, but also raises doubts among investors about the ability to work within the framework of the new market paradigm. Despite the staggering success in the US market, in other countries the company had to face much more serious competition. Even testing of goods delivery services in the framework of Uber investors and analysts still regard it as an experiment due to lack of experience and partners. In the long run, Apple’s actions in choosing a potential partner can have a significant impact on the attractiveness of Uber for investors - especially when trying to make a public offering (IPO).

For Apple, investments in Didi play a much more practical role - the company can better analyze the market before releasing its own car, the development of which has been claimed by many sources in recent years.