More people still download Uber’s app than Lyft’s, but Lyft is gaining on the ride-sharing giant.
Uber’s lead over Lyft app downloads is declining
Lyft’s reviews are way nicer, too.
Rani Molla was a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.
For the first five months of this year, Uber apps were downloaded 70 percent more frequently in U.S. app stores than Lyft, according to new data from app-measurement company App Annie. That’s down from a 165 percent difference for the same time period last year, and 255 percent in 2015.
Uber, whose CEO, Travis Kalanick, recently resigned, has been embroiled in a number of scandals — including rampant sexism, accessing a rape victim’s medical records, and a lawsuit about stealing proprietary technology from Alphabet — resulting in a slew of bad press this year.
And a #DeleteUber campaign in response to the company’s reaction to Trump’s immigration ban had real effects on downloads, briefly making Lyft the most popular ride-sharing download.
The #DeleteUber campaign also dragged down user sentiment. Lyft and Uber both saw dramatic increases in the volume of reviews on the iOS App Store in the U.S. while the #DeleteUber campaign was in full swing, according to App Annie. The reviews were in Lyft’s favor; app store reviews reflect not only users’ feelings about the app, but about the company at large.
Lyft had an average 4.4 out of five stars on the IOS app store this year. Uber’s rating was much lower: 1.8 out of five stars. Of the favorable four- or five-star reviews of Lyft, 30 percent referenced “Uber.” Similarly, 35 percent of the one- or two-star reviews critical of Uber mentioned “Lyft.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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