Uber’s developer team has unveiled a Ride Request “widget”. The on-demand private car service introduced today a widget — essentially an SDK — that directly brings the Uber service right into third-party apps, eliminating any deep-linking. Although it’ll be available worldwide, this offering is aimed directly at developers in China and India as their feedback helped Uber learn that users there are more comfortable with an embeddable experience.
Although it’s being introduced now, the SDK won’t be available until mid-April.
For the most part, Uber’s “Request a ride” feature widget isn’t that different from the first version that was released in December — the former is embedded into a third-party app while the latter is a button that opens up the Uber app. The company has also taken low bandwidth and poor GPS coverage into account when developing the widget as the map feature has been modified to avoid causing heavy consumption of data and battery power. While the map most users are accustomed to may not appear, Uber has included a visual indicator to highlight the ride request and trip status.
Targeting China and India with this offering is another effort by Uber to try and satiate the appetite of those developers who yearn for more support. It also helps to fortify the company’s presence in the face of enormous competition from Didi Kuaidi and GrabTaxi, both of which participate in a ridesharing alliance with Uber’s U.S. competitor Lyft. It’s been reported that Uber is losing $1 billion a year just in China as a result of Didi’s competition.
And while right now the battle is over drivers and market share, the next theater will be in the developer space. This is part of why Uber views 2016 as being a “transformative year” and has deployed resources to ensure that its ability to help overcome the “last mile” can be utilized by other apps in the marketplace.
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