It’s no news that this multimedia tech company, Quibi, is on the verge of a shutdown right after it started just six months ago. A lot has been questioning the whole multimedia-tech industry as to ‘why do a huge company with high prospects and solid financial backing is deciding to throw everything right after their debut?’
In this article, more light will be shed on to describe Quibi, its purpose, and goals, and the answer to your question, ‘Why Quibi Failed?’
How It Started
Founded on the 6th of April, 2020, Quibi was the brainchild of Meg Whitman (former CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and eBay), and Jeffrey Katzenberg (former chairman of Walt Disney Studios).
These two powerful business tycoons came together to get the financial support of several huge investors. These investors include Goldman Sachs (invested $50 million), Carlos Slim ($8 million), JPMorgan Chase ($50 million), WndrCo ($100 million), Google ($50 million), Alibaba ($100 million), and Madrone Capital Partners ($200 million) who was the highest investor. When put together, the total investment that Quibi earned is $1.8 billion even before the launching date pulled off.
The Mission and Vision
Quibi, a word which was gotten from the words “Quick bites” was targeted at enabling the user to video-stream short entertainment content for less than 10 minutes on their mobile devices. Think of it like YouTube or NetFlix but this one streams short-videos less than 10 minutes.
The content that was proposed for Quibi’s users on their mobile phones and tablets are movies in chapters, short series, and even daily entertainment programs such as lifestyle shows, news, and many more!
The short series shows and movies that were proposed to be streamed on Quibi starred A-list acts such as Queen Latifah, Christy Teigen, Trevor Noah, Chance the Rapper, Joe Jonas, John Travolta, Liam Hemsworth, Johnny The Rock Dwayne, Kevin Hart, and LeBron James. In addition to ace filmmakers such as Catherine Hardwicke and Steven Spielberg. Some of the movies that were scheduled to stream on Quibi included “Survive”, “When The Streetlights Go On”, “Most Dangerous Game”, “The Stranger”, “Flipped”, “Dummy” and “50 Stages of Fright” amongst others.
All these sounded promising and amazing for their proposed target audience, who were people that were between the ages of 18 and 30, but as promising as their motive was, Quibi couldn’t pull through.
Reasons for the Failure
Of course, there is no smoke without a fire, and there is no doubt that there are reasons why Quibi died a sudden death shortly after its launch. One part of the founding duo, in the person of Jeffrey Katzenberg, blamed the closure of the streaming platform on the Coronavirus pandemic that hit the world at the same time that the streaming platform was launched.
An open letter jointly written by both of them reads, “Quibi is not succeeding. Likely for one of two reasons: because the idea itself wasn’t strong enough to justify a standalone streaming service or because of our timing,” Countering that claim, stats showed that it was the other way around, as the Covid-19 outbreak was the perfect avenue for such a video streaming platform to rake in more subscribers and users.
Viewing stats analyzed by Alex Giaimo showed that viewing platforms like Netflix had a massive surge in subscribers and viewings during the earlier part of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Seeing that blaming the COVID-19 pandemic was just an excuse that the management of Quibi cooked up to save face. Some other possible reasons why Quibi Failed is:
1. The vision was too young for the people who founded it, and that is one of the reasons why they lacked the vibrancy, zeal, and hunger to see it through.
2. To the founders, it looked like a case of two wealthy people who needed a play project and not a case of wanting to meet a need in the entertainment industry.
3. The loss of 92% of their subscribers after the first trial. According to reports, Quibi had almost 5.6 billion subscribers at their first opening, and the app ranked at no 3 at that time. One of the reasons why a lot of these subscribers left was because of their inability to make screenshots when using the app.
4. They focused on the wrong set of influencers. Having movie bigwigs on board is good, but what matters is not who they are but what they can bring to the table in terms of engagements and followership.
5. The lawsuit that was filed by the interactive-video company, Eko, under the management of Elliott Management. Eko is suing Quibi for a “Misappropriation of trade secrets/patent infringement”.
According to the management at Eko, they claim that Quibi’s Turnstyle technology belonged to them. Based on the above list, there are so many reasons why Quibi might be doing an abrupt curtain call, but there are a few things that Quibi could have done differently.
Things Quibi Should have Done Differently
1. For such a youth-oriented platform such as Quibi, advertisement/branding to the target audience is important. Instead of spending a huge sum of money on top shots actors and the Super bowl advert, Quibi could have hired the services of internet sensations, who are pulling in numbers on the various social media platforms. They also could have advertised on various social media platforms.
2. Reach out to more investors if funds were the challenge.
3. Try to stay afloat for a couple more months, say 5 or 6 months, before throwing in the towel.
Unfortunately, we wouldn’t get to enjoy another streaming platform that offers ways on how we can entertain ourselves during quarantine days. What do you think? Should Quibi just went out of business or should’ve just done things differently?
