Unless I'm missing something, the claim that becoming a taxi driver can become a well-salaried, middle-class job for a significant number of people is patent nonsense . There is a reason that taxis look the way they do and are driven by the people who currently drive them, and regulations and licensing is only a small part of that. Uber might disrupt the taxi industry, maybe for the better, but once equilibrium is re…
I imagine that there must be a floor to what can be charged such that a driver is willing to work for the service and such that Uber can earn a profit. So, let's imagine that the market segments and that Uber wins say 80% of the market and the rest is left between competitors (I say imagine this, because as someone mentioned, there is a STRONG inertia effect. If I already have a taxi app with my information in it, then unless the price/service advantage is large, then I'm unlikely to change.). I imagine that one area that Uber will still maintain an advantage is that they will have a pretty good map in large cities of the traffic patterns (based on tracking of cabs). I imagine that that routing information could be valuable to delivery services in general. While large players like Google, Verizon, UPS, and such already have such data, there must be smaller players for whom it would be useful. Cities themselves might find it useful for traffic planning.
Also, on a scarier note, Uber knows the route that its customers take. If it can link that data to demographics, then that might have some value for advertising along given routes, commercial real estate, etc.