Is Apple taking on Uber with the help of Orange?

Apple announced that it will invest $1bn in Didi Chuxing, a Chinese ride-hailing platform, a fast growing business.

Tim Cook told Xinhua News Agency “We decided to make the investment for a number of strategic reasons, including the chance to learn more about certain segments of the Chinese market. We see lots of opportunities for closer cooperation between the two companies, and we also believe it will deliver strong returns”.

Apple has invested heavily in expanding its presence in China through Apple stores, environmental initiatives and supply chains.

“Didi is focused on providing a great experience to Chinese customers, and in the process, they are creating jobs and economic opportunities through innovation. It is also helping the environment by reducing the number of cars on the road” according to Cook.

“The endorsement from Apple is enormous encouragement and inspiration for our four-year-old company, with 300million users, and a 99 percent share of taxi hailing market, which will continue to offer flexible and reliable transportation choices and help cities to solve environmental issues, employment and transportation problems, and we are not same as Uber but we will always be rivals” Cheng Wei, founder and CEO of Didi.

The Didi name means Orange Technology. China’s car-hailing trade wars where both sides spend billions of dollars in funding discounts for customers and subsidies to drivers. Didi is four times the size of Uber in China.

Didi has also invested in its peers Lyft in the US , Grab in Southeast Asia and Ola in India to compete with the big fish Uber globally outside China.

Name	Funding Sources	Value in £ in Bn	Value in US $ in Bn
Uber	Tech Investments in Taxis	6.30	9.00
Didi Chuxing	Apple, SoftBank, Teamasek, Tencent	3.08	4.40
Lyft	Andreessen, Icahn, Rakuten, General Motors, Didi	1.40	2.00
OLA	SoftBank, DST, Didi	1.26	1.80