Is Uber The Next Blackberry? - October 9, 2025

Waymo Could Be The New iPhone

I recently read that Waymo had reached 250,000 rides per week. I was impressed by that number, as it means that if you assume each ride has two passengers, that works out to 26 million people riding in Waymos each year.   That had me wondering if Waymo was going to surpass Uber any time soon as the leading ride-hailing service?  And, that question got me wondering that if Waymo did surpass Uber, would that make Uber the next Research In Motion (Blackberry)?  What I mean by that analogy is that you’ll recall Blackberry was an early leader in the smartphone device industry back in the early 2000’s and it reached its peak in 2011-12.  Despite having a tremendous head start and a sizeable lead in market share, the Blackberry lost its dominant position to the Apple iPhone, for reasons we’ll get into later in this article. 

First, let’s start with a brief explanation of Waymo.  Waymo is a ride-hailing service offered to the public, currently operating in a handful of US cities.  What’s unique about Waymo is that all of their vehicles on the road are fully self-driving (“FSD”); there is no driver operating the car that gives you a ride, which is why Waymo is also referred to as a robotaxi service.  This takes some getting used to, but having recently taken a Waymo ride in Phoenix, I will share that it’s a pleasant and safe experience. The entire Waymo fleet is made of F-type Jaguar vehicles, so it’s a nice ride.  The interior of the car is spotless, and there is no driver making unnecessary conversation (sidenote - I don't mind talking with an Uber driver as I’ll have a conversation with almost anyone, but many people have commented that they do not enjoy conversations with their driver).  

Waymo started as Google’s self-driving car project in 2009. From 2017-2019 its technology was tested with safety drivers in the Phoenix area, and it launched Waymo One – its ride-hailing robotaxi service in Phoenix in 2020.  Waymo currently operates in Phoenix (200 vehicles on the road), Los Angeles and San Francisco (730 vehicles on the road between the two cities combined). The company’s FSD uses a mix of lidar, radar, cameras, and AI for navigation, obstacle detection, and decision-making.  

If you’re doubtful that robotaxis will be a prominent way of ride hailing, think about this: China experts predict that 30% of new vehicles there will be self-driving by the year 2030; AI is now mature enough to be deployed in FSD’s; Waymo vehicles have now driven 71 million miles; based on this on-road experience the follow data has been compiled: Waymo rides result in: - 88% fewer accidents than human driven cars: -79% fewer air bags deployed: -78% fewer injury causing accidents.  

One last point on Waymo; if a Waymo incurs a traffic violation, who gets the ticket?  Police in San Bruno, California, recently pulled over a Waymo robotaxi for making an illegal U-turn, but noted in a social media post, that has since gone viral, that their “citation books don’t have a box for ‘robot.’” With Waymo, technically the company is driving the vehicle, so the traffic violation should go to them. You certainly can’t give the ticket to the passengers! 

Waymo has been offering robotaxi-based ride-hailing services for a few years now.  How does their launch match-up against Uber?   By the end of Uber’s first two years of operation (2010–2011)  approximately 200,000 total rides were completed. Those rides were worth $10-15 million in fares, which translated to about $2.5 million in revenue for Uber.  By comparison Waymo launched in 2019 and delivered about 110,000 rides in its first year of operation; these rides were initially provided with safety drivers. In the next year, 2020 Waymo surpassed 100,000 rides given, in full autonomous vehicles. The starting numbers for Uber and Waymo are comparable, and both were creating a new category of product/service.  Uber with ride-sharing/ride-hailing in general, and Waymo with driverless ride-hailing.  So both companies had lots to overcome in terms of educating and swaying customers to use their service.

Within the next two years (by 2013–2014), Uber’s figures grew exponentially into millions of rides per month and hundreds of millions in revenue. Fast forward to  fiscal 2024, Uber globally generated $25 Billion in revenue from rides, $14 Billion from delivery, and another $5 Billion from freight services. All of that from 11.3 Billion trips in 2024. Doing the math, Uber generates $3.89 per ride, from all three types of rides. It’s a very low margin, but it’s a lucrative business because of the volume of rides offered globally.

By contrast, Waymo’s current robotaxi revenue was $125 million in 2024, and Waymo achieved that by delivering four million rides in 2024. Doing similar math for Waymo, the company generates on average $31.25 in revenue per ride…almost ten times what Uber makes per ride. So while Waymo has a long way to go to catch up to Uber in terms of market share and volume of business, eliminating the driver, and more reliance on technology, goes a long way towards improving the unit economics of ride-hailing.  

According to EE Times, Waymo's revenue is expected to grow to over $1.3 billion by 2027. Morgan Stanley further estimates Waymo could hit US $2.5 billion annual revenue by 2030. To achieve these revenue targets Waymo has a lot of marketing to do to consumers and a lot of brand development to do.  Fortunately, with Waymo being owned by Google, they have deep pockets for marketing.  

All of this to say that Uber is firmly in the lead in the ride-hailing industry, and that Waymo has a long way to go to become the iPhone to the Blackberry.  But history is destined to repeat itself for those that don’t heed the lessons of the past.  As we’ll discuss now, BlackBerry severely underestimated the Apple iPhone and never saw it coming for the throne.  

At its peak, in 2009-10,  Blackberry held 20% of the global smartphone market, and dominated in the United States, owning 50% of the US smartphone market. By 2012 BlackBerry had more than 80 million subscribers worldwide, with the BlackBerry Bold and Curve being especially popular among businesses and governments.  

The Apple iPhone was introduced to the market in 2007, and it achieved 10 million active users by the next year. By 2010, even though Blackberry remained the market leader, there were 60 million iPhones in use.  The iPhone was initially seen as a niche/ luxury product that only soccer moms would use. Blackberry’s thinking was there is no way corporate and government users are going to switch over and adopt a pretty looking device. But in 2010 there was not only the iPhone to contend with but Android-based devices actually surpassed Blackberry globally as the largest smartphone platform. Blackberry fell to third place as both iPhone and Android devices surpassed Blackberry in usage.  Blackberry continued to slip globally, and Android and Apple devices grew, to the point where by 2016, active users of Blackberry devices had dropped to below 25 million. BlackBerry eventually stopped producing phones altogether by 2022, focusing instead on enterprise software and cybersecurity. Meanwhile industry experts estimate that there are 1.5 billion iPhone in use today, and there are estimated to be four million Android devices in use.  

Blackberry lost its market leadership position because it ignored the competition from Android and Apple, it didn’t really understand its customers and over-estimated their affinity for security and form factor (ie - physical keyboard). In particular, Blackberry under-estimated the appeal to consumers of a nice looking device.  Steve Jobs deserves a lot of credit for insisting all Apple products be visually appealing.  Having been both a user of many Blackberries and many Apple devices, but also demanding high functionality from my devices/tools, I too made the switch from a Blackberry to an iPhone many years ago, because the user experience was superior without a drop-off in functionality.  Now let's tie this analogy back to Waymo and Uber.  

Uber has a huge lead in the ride-hailing market, in terms of number of rides and overall revenue. It overcame shaky leadership in the early days without hurting its brand.  We’ll all note that Uber rides used to be cheaper; that’s because they weren’t publicly traded and venture capital was available to cover the losses in those early days of Uber. One could see is that as an investment in building the Uber brand, which has now been paying off for several years.  It has transitioned from a venture capital backed start-up to a publicly traded company, where investors see the revenues and margins each quarter.  An Uber ride now costs a lot more, partially because Uber has to report on its unit economics and they can’t show investors that they are losing money on each ride. And, we’re hearing about Uber drivers complaining about how little they get paid for each ride, which results in them working/driving long days to make decent money.  Despite all of this, everyone still “calls an Uber”.  The term "Uber" has become similar to “Kleenex” and “Xerox”, where the product/service name is synonymous with the company name.  

By the way - no one can fight with me over my Waymo vehicle when two of us are waiting for a hailed-ride, because my name appears on a display on top of the car, and only I can start the ride with my Waymo account/app.  My ride experience with Waymo was great, and much better than many of my recent Uber experiences.  I’ll agree that Waymo has a long way to go to displace Uber as the market leader, but Waymo is starting to look like a shiny iPhone as compared to a clunky Uber/Blackberry.