India's taxi industry the latest to quake

The latest country where drivers are resisting the Uber application is India, where the Economic Times reports two large taxi companies has now got India's Reserve Bank to stop Uber from allegedly taking rupees out of India. 

Mega Cabs Ltd. and Meru Cab Company claim Uber’s trademark ride-payment system violates Indian foreign-exchange laws, and the Reserve Bank of India agreed, saying in a statement "evasion of these rules by some companies has led to an outflow of foreign exchange".

Meanwhile taxi drivers in South Africa claim that drivers who signed up with Uber are not registered, licences taxi drivers. Uber however sidestepped the issues of taix association

registration, saying their drivers have professional drivers' permits. This ignores the fact that taxi drivers also have to be registered with their local councils through taxi associations.

The resistance in South Africa have petered out, as metered taxi associations have bigger problems right now than being undercut by uber drivers, as every man jack with a semi-roadworthy car have started touting for passengers in official taxi ranks, giving even uber  drivers competition. In the KwaZulu-Natal capital, one of the city's largest two metered operators, Wilkens, said he expects there will soon be fighting between official and pirate drivers, and accused the pirate drivers of robbing and even raping their passengers.

Taxi drivers in London, Milan, Rio, New York and South Korea have also protested the Uber app, saying the unregistered drivers created unfair competition for legal drivers.

The passengers who have to get somewhere however had no sympathies. Uber is cheaper

and while the official taxi drivers went on a go slow to protest against Uber, the company said download of the app spikes as people looked for a quick, cheap ride.

In South Africa, an uber taxi is at least ten times cheaper than a normal metered ride, even in "peak demand" times.

The way we see it at The Driver, taxi companies and taxi drivers will do well to start surfing the driver-hailing app wave. At the time of writing, more than 24,000 users were recommending Uber on the android store and there were 17 taxi apps competing with Uber. 

These competing apps were, in order of number of downloads: 

Easy Taxi, Lyft, 99c Taxis, Grabtaxi, Tappsi, Curb, Mytaxi, Yandex taxi, Zlap taxi, Easy taxi, Offer Ride, Taxi Driver, My Teksi, Meru Cabs, Taxi for Sure and Sidecar Ride.

Each one of these 17 apps is another nail in the coffin of the taxi industry as we know it. (And some traditions have caskets lids containing only 18 nails, although the American military tradition claims for 21 nails...) 

For the next generation of commuters will want to hail a taxi -- preferrably a driverless google car -- using their smartphones, there is no getting around that.