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Quibi was to revolutionize short video, it’s a flop

Presented in 2018, which finally emerged in April 2020 after several weeks of teasing. The objective was then rather simple, namely: to unveil a new dedicated streaming platform in short format. The strategy of the service was to focus exclusively on its mobile application so that users can watch series directly from their smartphone – in horizontal as in vertical format.

To hope to compete with the big names on the market, Quibi has bet on the creation of original content bringing together big names, both in the streaming sector and in that of studios (NBC, Universal, Sony Pictures, etc.). However, the results do not seem to live up to expectations – far from it, knowing that service also encountered difficulties before its launch.

A disappointing launch for Quibi

The mobile analysis company Sensor Tower assures that Quibi has lost 90% of its users once the free trial period has ended. In sum, the streaming application would have converted a little less than 10% of its subscribers.

Quibi reportedly registered 910,000 users when it launched in April, a figure that dropped to 72,000 after the three months of free trials ended, representing a conversion rate of around 8%.

The conversion rate of new streaming services is obviously never very high, but it is still higher than 8% usually. If the comparison with Disney + is to be taken with tweezers, it remains interesting. The latter managed to convert 11% of its subscribers after their free trial, knowing that more than 9.5 million people subscribed during the first three days of service availability in the USA. In short, the conversion rate is also quite low, but the number of users is very high since a large number of them have turned to the platform from the start.

For its part, Quibi did not give figures except that 5.6 million would have downloaded the application. For Sensor Tower, this figure would be 5.4 million people, which suggests that the estimate of the company is lower than reality.

In this regard, a spokesperson for Quibi told The Verge : « The number of paying subscribers is incorrect […]. To date, more than 5.6 million people have downloaded the Quibi app. Our conversion rate from trial downloads is higher than from mobile apps, and we see an excellent conversion rate to paid subscribers – both for 90-day free trial registrations from April and for 14 day free trial registrations from May and June ».

In any case, we can only recognize that the launch of Quibi is not very good, a result that co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg puts on the back of the pandemic. In May, he declared: ” I attribute everything that went wrong to the coronavirus. All ».

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