Nihon Kotsu as the "Prince of Taxis." The company was founded as a sole proprietorship in 1928 and reorganized as a stock company in December 1945. It began as a limousine operator and expanded to taxi service in 1940. NK operates the most popular taxi hailing mobile application in Japan, Japan Taxi. Toyota invested 500 million yen in the app in 2017, followed by a second 7.5 billion investment in 2018. Tokyo Musen, a major rival of Nihon Kotsu in the Tokyo area, joined the app later that year in an effort to counterbalance foreign rivals such as Uber and Didi Chuxing.
DiDi mobile platform taxi-calling application was developed by Chinese mobile application company Beijing Xiaoju Keji Co., Ltd. The application is one of the major taxi apps in China, with over 100 million users in more than 300 cities. It was established in June 2012. Didi Kuaidi is the result of the February 2015 merger between taxi-hailing firms Didi Dache (backed by Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Limited) and Kuaidi Dache, backed by Alibaba Group. A study in December 2013 by Analysis International, cited by Reuters, estimated Didi Dache to hold approximately 55% of the smartphone-based taxi-hailing market (about 150 million Chinese