Via Ellen Huet, Forbes

Excerpt:

The U.S. ride-hailing market may have room for two players, but apparently not for three.

Sidecar, an on-demand car service that trailed far behind Uber and Lyft despite often being the first to build new and creative features, is morphing into mainly a delivery service for other businesses, the company told FORBES. The move suggests that the industry’s established players — Uber and Lyft — have pulled so far ahead that it’s become nearly impossible for Sidecar to compete.

Sidecar isn’t shutting down its ride-hailing product, but it’s moving most of its employees and energy into the delivery service. It’s hard not to view the change as giving up on passengers. “Almost the entire company” is now focused on delivery-related products and sales, said cofounder and CEO Sunil Paul. It is prioritizing onboarding drivers in cities where it does deliveries. By this fall, the majority of Sidecar’s revenue will be from deliveries, not rides, he said.

“Sidecar was more of a technology company than it was a marketing company,” said Brian Solis, an analyst with Altimeter Group. “Its feature set has been very exemplary, but I don’t know that it used the same brainpower to create market share.”