2020 was the best possible year to launch a streaming service: everyone was stuck at home, wanting to entertain themselves in some way. For example, Disney+ took the opportunity to launch its service on March 24, and shortly after, on April 6, Quibi would do the same, an app that promised to kill Netflix by offering something they couldn’t: short-format series to watch while waiting for the bus or when you have five minutes to spare. Because, let’s be realistic, who has an hour to watch Black Mirror or Stranger Things?
Quibi, not kiwi
The founder of Quibi, Jeffrey Katzenberg, was not a nobody in Hollywood, far from it: he was the director of Walt Disney Studios for ten years, founded Dreamworks, and after two decades of success, he decided to try his next sure step towards becoming one of the most respected names in the industry: having his own streaming service. “Quibi” came from “Quick Bites” and never really resonated with the international audience. Despite the fact that, as TikTok has shown, the idea wasn’t bad.
We all have TikTok in our pockets, and we all spend hours and hours scrolling endlessly. Why not spend the time we spend watching recipes we will never make and mountain plans we won’t join… on watching series produced by a studio that have invested a good amount of money? Moreover, with a variety of options: the idea of Quibi was that you could watch any program vertically, but when you changed the position of the phone, the margins would expand and you could watch the same series in classic format. And whether you like it or not, in the middle of 2025, it still seems like a pretty incredible idea to me.
In one week, 1,700,000 people downloaded Quibi and took advantage of its 90-day free trial, but very few (estimated at 8%) ended up subscribing. In fact, one month after the launch, it was already in 125th place among the most downloaded apps on iPhone, and it continued to drop, with only 1,300,000 active users. And who did they blame? Well, of course, COVID. They had some reason; it was an app designed for urban life in the modern period of humanity when more people have stayed home without going out. And of course, when given the choice, a big TV with powerful sound will always be better than figuring out what’s happening on your little mobile screen.
Failbi
The original idea of Quibi was that it would only work on your smartphone, but they soon realized that if they wanted to succeed, they had no choice but to pivot, and they launched the possibility of watching series on television thanks to Chromecast or AirPlay, but it was already too late, the internet had made all the possible memes, no one gave a chance to their original content, and little by little it sank deeper and deeper. On October 21, just half a year after its launch, its closure was announced, leaving its nearly 500,000 subscribers worldwide devastated. To give you an idea, Netflix has around 300 million. Those were not good numbers, no.
On December 1st, the service finally closed its doors and some of the series were bought and aired by other services. In its defense, the ideas weren’t bad (although it was evident that the production was cheap). Things like 50 States of Fright -which had 2 seasons and episodes directed by the one and only Sam Raimi-, the reboot of The Fugitive, an episodic and at-home recreation of The Princess Bride, a documentary about Kirby Jenner (Kendall’s sister) or season 7 of Reno 911! had their audience. Small, but an audience nonetheless.
Of the dozens of projects announced -among which there was, for example, a series directed by Steven Spielberg– nothing more was heard. In fact, it is quite surprising that, of the billion dollars spent on creating original content, not a single dollar managed to stay in people’s minds or in popular culture. Quibi came offering something very different and aimed to reign, but it encountered the most uncomfortable truth of all: it simply did not understand anything that was happening around it and ended up being one of the most amusing victims of the streaming tyranny. Would it have been different without COVID? Frankly, with such a crazy idea and TikTok being free, it’s hard to imagine.
