(Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
Wherever you are, whatever you do, whatever device you own, Uber wants to give you a ride.
You can call an Uber car from your Apple Watch, Pebble smartwatch, or Microsoft Band 2 fitness tracker.
Facebook Messenger has an Uber app built right in. If you work in an office, you can grab an Uber from right within Microsoft Outlook, Slack, or Atlassian HipChat. You can call an Uber from Microsoft Windows 10, or price one up via Google Maps.
Not to mention the Uber apps for iPhone and Android.
For comparison, Uber's leading competition, Lyft, is doing a fair job of it, forming partnerships with companies like Slack and Starbucks while improving its own iPhone and Android apps. But it just can't hang, app for app, with Uber and its wide reach.
It's an underrated factor in Uber's massive success — and another sign of just how aggressive the company is willing to get in its march towards world domination.
We can build it
Building an app and getting into the Apple App Store or Google Play market isn't exactly easy to begin with. You need the time, tools, and talent to bring it from concept to execution.
From there, the work just compounds on itself.
Adding new features takes considerable effort, from concept to design to engineering. And then you basically have to do the work twice to make sure that they work the same way on iPhone and Android.
(Pablo Blazquez Dominguez / Getty)
The Uber app for iPhone.
That's just the beginning. Given that Apple and Google are the undisputed kings of the smartphone world — the Apple iPhone at the high end and Google Android at the low — there's not a lot of incentive to develop for anyone else's operating system.
This has created a real problem for would-be smartphone competitor Microsoft: It can't sell more Windows phones without more apps, and it can't get developers to make more apps without selling more Windows phones. Indeed, developers have left the Windows Store entirely rather than commit to the energy and expenditure of supporting those apps.
But Uber rushed in where others stayed out, building a super-deluxe app for Windows 10 computers, tablets, and smartphones. In fact, it's the first Uber app for the desktop computer.
Before that, Uber was one of the very few to officially support an app on the older Windows Phone 8.1, even when nobody else cared.
(Business Insider)
Uber on an Apple Watch.
Accelerating matters was this year's release of the Uber API, letting developers work in the ability to call a car straight into their own apps. It's not the same kind of work as Uber building and maintaining a zillion more apps, obviously, but it also means that Uber has to put the time and effort in to keep developers happy.