Streaming Service Quibi Shuts Down Six Months After Launch
"we’ve considered and exhausted every option available to us"
The streaming market is booming as people continuously adopt online entertainment. Netflix has already recorded its best quarter yet this year adding 15.7 million net paying subscribers from January to March.
A couple of streaming services have therefore sprung up ready to take on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and the likes. One of the newest streaming services, Quibi, which was launched in the US early this year is already shutting down, just six months after launch.
In a statement, the company’s founder Jeffrey Katzenberg says, “The world has changed dramatically since Quibi launched and our standalone business model is no longer viable.”
Quibi was charging $5 a month with ads or $8 without ads. It offered different entertainment content from movies, series, and even news in up to 10 minute long videos.
The team behind the service says they are winding up operations because the idea might have been an issue or their timing wasn’t right.
“Our failure was not for lack of trying; we’ve considered and exhausted every option available to us,” the company said to its employees in a letter.
Quibi was officially launched on April 6th with $1.75 billion investor funding. It was backed by prominent names in Hollywood including Disney, NBCUniversal and Viacom.
In the six months of operation, Quibi has made $3.3 million in subscription revenue according to Apptopia, an analytics firm. The analytics firm reveals the company’s revenue has been declining since July.
Quibi is going under, but the streaming market now has a wide variety of options including Disney+, HBO Max, and NBC’s Peacock. But here’s the caveat: most of these are not available in Kenya, so you’re stuck with Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Showmax, and maybe AppleTV+.
Update: Shutdown Plans
In a new blog post published by the streaming platform, Quibi, the service “will end streaming on or about December 1, 2020.”
“At this time we do not know if the Quibi content will be available anywhere after our last day of service.” the company wrote.
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