I've been following the IRL app club closely for a while now. The club is made up of apps that connect us to the "real" world, like Airbnb, Ticketmaster, and other apps that suffered when lockdowns put the "real" world out of range for many of us.
If you've been following the newsletter for a while, you know that most of the club members have managed to not just return to their former download levels but also beat them. For the last few months, both Uber and Lyft have also done that.
Uber's downloads dropped by more than 70% in 2020. They started rising this March and hit a new all-time high just last week. According to our estimates, Uber's iOS and Android apps were downloaded 567,000 times in the US last week. That's nearly 400% more than covid times. But more realistically, it's about 50% higher than pre-covid levels.
Lyft is trending a bit lower but has also seen a massive increase in downloads over the last few weeks. Downloads rose more than 280% since hitting rock bottom in 2020. Last week, Lyft managed to find its way into more than 338,000 devices in the US, according to our estimates.
As a New Yorker, Uber and Lyft have become my primary mode of transportation. Not that I like the reliance. I really don't. But there aren't many acceptable options right now. Looking at these numbers, I'm clearly not the only one. I don't think this trend is going away any time soon, so I expect a more fierce competition between these two rivals.
This competition won't be cheap, so I'm not expecting they'll be getting any cheaper.
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