I live in a very touristy city where plain-old taxi drivers adopted a taxi app (EasyTaxi). We don't have Uber or anything and the taxi app uses regular, licensed taxis. The fact that I live in a boring neighborhood where regular people live rather than in a touristy area always meant I was underserved.

EasyTaxi changed everything. There were times when I simply couldn't get a taxi at all, now this is almost never the case. The entire system is far more predictable, so I use taxis a lot more - previously I would arrange to get rides from friends.

Taxi drivers also report to have 30%-50% better occupancy after the app. They no longer need the taxi coops so they are cutting that cost as well.

The value is there, even for an app that is not, like, breaking laws by running an unlicensed service. It's also a bit of a winner-take-all market - everybody wants to be where everybody else is. Whoever wins the fight will be a very big company.