Uber Taxi, which had raised expectations through collaboration with Naver, has returned to a decline. The number of users increased in the short term but immediately turned downward, leading to analysis that linking with an external platform alone has limits in breaking the solid structure of Korea's taxi-hailing market.
Uber Taxi is the taxi-hailing service operated in Korea by the global ride-hailing platform Uber. It entered the country in the mid-2010s with a private vehicle–based service but withdrew due to regulations, and it has since reentered and is operating by connecting ordinary taxi drivers with users.
According to the app statistics analysis platform Mobile Index on the 29th, Uber Taxi's domestic monthly active users (MAU) last month totaled 654,357. The user count, which had surged to 802,392 in Dec. last year, plunged by about 150,000 in two months, giving back its previous gains.
Looking at the long-term trend, a pattern of "step-like rebound followed by a renewed decline" is repeating. Uber Taxi's MAU hit a low of 406,958 in Feb. 2023, then rebounded to 740,465 in Sept. of the same year. It went on to set a record high of 828,340 in Aug. 2024, but it has now fallen back to the mid-600,000 range, failing to sustain growth momentum.
The gap with Kakao Mobility's industry No. 1 Kakao T remains large. Kakao T's MAU is 13,579,329, about 20 times that of Uber Taxi. Kakao T is firmly maintaining its solo lead with a market share of more than 90%.
Uber Taxi teamed up with Naver in Sept. last year to launch a major user expansion push. It linked the hailing function within Naver Map and offered Uber's subscription service "Uber One" benefits (credit accrual and priority dispatch, etc.) to about 10 million Naver Plus membership users. But despite this bold collaboration, the user metrics turned downward again after a brief rise.
Industry officials cite the failure to differentiate the service as a key reason. Uber placed a big bet overseas with its private car-sharing model (UberX), but in Korea the Passenger Transport Service Act blocks the introduction of that model. It remains a simple brokerage that links ordinary taxi drivers and users, drawing criticism that it has not established distinction from existing services.
On top of that, the taxi-hailing market's unique "network effect" is also holding Uber Taxi back. The structure requires many users to attract drivers, and many drivers to speed up dispatches and bring in more users, but Kakao T has already secured the pool of affiliated taxis and users.
A mobility industry official said, "Korea's ride-hailing market is already in a mature phase beyond the tipping point of the network effect," adding, "To break the leader's lock-in effect, not gradual partnerships but a level of capital injection that disrupts the existing market's rules or bold deregulation would have to come first for any meaningful change in market share to be possible."