Online food delivery platform Uber Eats yesterday announced that it would quit Hong Kong at the end of the year, ending five years of battling for a share of the territory’s food delivery market.
Uber announced the “difficult decision” in an online statement, which gave no reason for why it was winding down operations.
The firm said it would redouble its commitment to its ride-sharing unit in Hong Kong, a business that remains in a legal gray area.
Launched in 2016, Uber Eats was a latecomer to Hong Kong’s food delivery sector, where Foodpanda and Deliveroo had a head start and have since become the two dominant players.
Uber Eats cornered only 5 percent of the market, compared with Deliveroo’s 44 percent and Foodpanda’s 51 percent, data platform Measurable AI said.
Hong Kong was one of the first international cities where Uber Technologies Inc’s core ride-sharing business set up shop as it rapidly expanded outside the US.
In a territory with a reputation for less-than-accommodating taxi drivers who often refuse rides and only accept cash, the app became a major success with many Hong Kongers.
However, Uber has faced staunch opposition from local taxi groups and a government that has declined to legalize the ride-sharing industry.
In 2018, 24 Uber drivers were convicted and fined for carrying passengers without a hire-car permit and their appeal was dismissed two years later.
Uber continues to operate and police enforcement is patchy, with periodic crackdowns.
The platform has begun including taxis and earlier this year, it bought up local app HK Taxi, a move that it said it hoped would lead to the legalization of its operations.
In October, on its seventh anniversary in Hong Kong, Uber said that it had 216,000 registered Hong Kong drivers, who made up more than 25 percent of its global business.
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