RIP, Quibi

 RIP, Quibi

 

After just mere 6 months since its grand launch, Quibi didn’t live up to its expectation of $1.8 billion and is shutting down its streaming service. They are returning $350 million of investment back to their investors, who are Disney, Alibaba, Sony, Time Warner and Warner Bros just to name a few. Even though there are doubts about this venture since day 1, everyone is still surpised to see it failed so quick. Here are two main reasons contributed its failure:

 

Bad Timing

The founders and the company believe in the idea of Quibi still, and that Quibi failed mostly because the bad timing of launch in the midst of pandemic that sent the whole country into lockdown. They envisioned that Quibi would be mostly used during people’s commute time waiting for public transportation, or standing in line for food during lunch time. Now that majority of the people work from work because of COVID, the premise of APP no long exist, and people continue with their “Netflix and chill” on the comfort of their own couch.

 

Fierce Competition

Instead of the popular freemium model, where the platform would offer free content to attract users and charge fee for top content, Quibi go straight to $4.99/month. No doubt the high-quality content with numerous celebrities and great production are burning the investment fast and $4.99 could be just recouping their cost. Users still can’t justify 5 dollars a month for short videos, while they are already paying $10 for Netflix, $15 for Disney+, $10 for Apple TV+, and $15 for HBO Max, and they can watch Youtube for free. They could perhaps learn a lesson from the raise of TikTok and how some short form video could actually succeed in this time.