One of the most important challenges for TaxiMagic is obviously the presence of multiple competitors. On one of the slides, it showed a bunch of other taxi applications if one were to search for a taxi application on their phone. That shows how many competitors there already are right now. That number will only grow. Also, one risk is that one of these competitors might actually be good and undercut TaxiMagic with lower prices once their contracts are done with the various fleets around the country. As the speaker admitted, they were actually AFRAID of one of the companies because of how the rider can pay the taxi driver directly through their mobile phones. I forget what that competitor's name is called, but just the fact that they admit to being nervous about how they will fare against a competitor should say something about that challenge.
As far as opportunities for TaxiMagic, perhaps (as some people have already mentioned) they can extend their reach into the sedan or limo business. However, I don't think a car rental type of thing would really help them since Enterprise, Avis, and other big names already have that industry mastered. I liked how they went into a partnership with Heineken. Perhaps similar partnerships with other companies could increase their visibility. They can maybe get into a partnership with some TV networks. Let's say a ride is for sure going to take more than 25 minutes, perhaps TaxiMagic can show an episode of The Office on one of those devices that they showed us in class... just a thought.
I agree with you about how overcoming lock-in with Facebook is difficult for consumers even though the service is free. I wrote about Google and consumers face the same lock-in barriers of migrating all of their data to another company.
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