Dead end for taxi-app subsidies

Taxi clients using mobile applications to book cabs will no longer be subsidized by providers of those services, China's two most-used taxi-hailing app companies said on Friday.

The announcements placed a marker in a multi-billion-yuan price war.

"We will stop cash subsidies to taxi users and drivers by Saturday," Didi Dache said on Weibo. "Long-term rewarding policies are on the horizon." Competitor Kuaidi Dache, with the biggest taxi-booking mobile application by market share, posted a similar online announcement. It said the company is looking for new ways to subsidize users.