Uber Is the Most Popular Ride-hailing App in 108 Countries

(Bloomberg) -- As the battle for the world's ride-hailing customers heats up, here's one statistic to consider: Uber is now the most used taxi app in 108 countries. 

That's according to analytics provider SimilarWeb, which tracked the reach and usage of ride-hailing apps in 171 countries on Android devices. The map below shows that Uber, indicated in dark blue, is the most dominant player in broad swaths of the globe, including all of North America and much of Europe, Africa, and South America.

San Francisco-based Uber has a particularly big lead in the U.S., where the app is installed on 21 percent of all Android devices, compared with just under 3 percent for its main domestic competitor Lyft, according to SimilarWeb. Australia has also proven to be a strong market for Uber, with 13 percent of Android users in the country having installed the app.  

The one region where Uber has struggled is Asia, where local operators have held ground. Earlier this month, Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick ceded the world's biggest ride-hailing market, announcing that he was selling the startup's China operations to Didi (Didi is shown in light blue in the map above and below). In India, Uber also fell short of Ola (shown in yellow), even after Uber said last year that it would spend $1 billion to gain its footing in the country. Ola has been installed on 20 percent of India's Android devices, giving the Bangalore-based company twice the reach of Uber. 

Meanwhile, Singapore-based Grab held ground in Southeast Asia, coming out as the No.1 service in six countries. Dubai-based Careem proved popular in the Middle East.

SimilarWeb tracked only countries in which at least 1 percent of all Android devices had a particular ride-hailing app installed, bringing the total number of countries the company analyzed to 171. 

To contact the authors of this story: Olivia Zaleski in San Francisco at ozaleski@bloomberg.net, Andre Tartar in New York at atartar@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Aki Ito at aito16@bloomberg.net, Mark Milian