Quibi: A Victim of the Streaming Wars

You may have heard of the streaming service, Quibi, in the past year. Quibi is a streaming service focused exclusively on short-form entertainment, or at least, it was. Quibi no longer exists, as it was shut down last December after being available for less than a year. Its original shows were sold to Roku, and its 500,000 subscribers were cancelled. The idea of Quibi was a unique one within the growing pack of streaming services coming out, so why did it fail? 

The Content

I just mentioned that Quibi was offering a unique and different approach in a very saturated market. This doesn’t necessarily mean it was a good one. Quibi was exclusively available on mobile devices and was all about short, digestible content. You wouldn’t find shows with hour long episodes on Quibi. The problem with this is that the shows that were available on Quibi never hit the mark like many other widely regarded shows on other platforms. There was no Stranger Things or Game of Thrones on Quibi.

The Price
Quibi was available at the monthly subscription cost of $5 per month with ads and $8 per month without ads. This is problematic because short-form entertainment is already widely available for free on many platforms like TikTok and Youtube. Quibi was competing with platforms like Netflix and Disney Plus, the latter of which is the same price as Quibi’s ad-free model, and yet sports a much more premium content library. 

The Accessibility

Quibi was trying to compete with premium streaming services, yet it didn’t have the platforms to back that up. Quibi was only available on mobile devices due its selling point of being more palatable than other more “daunting” streaming services. In doing this, it avoided many popular platforms that other services occupy, like Smart TV’s and gaming consoles. I don’t think this was a good idea for a service that put up a billion dollars on its content library. 

Quibi’s failure is attributable to many different aspects of the service. In trying to compete with both premium streaming services and free content platforms, it wasn’t able to succeed in either. Quibi is just another piece of proof that the “streaming wars” are in full swing.