It’s the billion dollar question on everyone’s mind, is Quibi the new Netflix? The newly launched short-streaming app seeks to “entertain, inform and inspire” those who have 10 minutes to spare, in a bold attempt to disrupt the content consumption model and present bite-sized television shows through an app that does not work on your television.
What are the shows on Quibi?
The star-studded mobile-only streaming app that went live this week includes shows like reality television, documentaries, travel and food, as well as daily horoscope and meditation videos. As for Quibi’s, big budget movie projects, it features celebrities like Sophie Turner, Liam Hemsworth and Queen Latifah.
But Quibi’s unscripted shows are perhaps the best feature in its content library, with Crissy Teigen’s Chrissy Court where she becomes an actual courtroom judge for people fighting over minor claims and the much-awaited revival of Punk’d, now hosted by Chance the Rapper, taking centre stage.
Other notable shows on Quibi include Usher’s The Sauce, which explores dance cultures in the United States of America, along with the action-packed Elba v Block, where Idris Elba races against a professional driver, Ken Block.
The streaming platform is also set to bring in a host of new shows in the coming weeks, including an eight part Joe Jones travel series which includes trips with his brothers, Lewis Hamilton, Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Scherzinger and Jack Black.
Is Quibi the new Netflix or a US$1.75 billion failure?
Quibi was born with the aim to disrupt daily entertainment platforms like YouTube, Hulu and Disney+, as well as being specifically developed for younger audiences glued with phones in their hands.
View this post on InstagramIt’s nice to (officially) meet you. Have you downloaded Quibi yet? Link in bio.
A subscription costs US$4.99 a month (with ads) and US$7.99 (ad-free). It also comes with an impressive 90-day free trial. So in terms of price points, an ad-free Quibi is at least a dollar cheaper than Netflix and Amazon Prime, but a touch more expensive than Disney+ and Hulu.
But ultimately, answering is Quibi the new Netflix lies in its entire content model. The whole appeal of Netflix and Amazon Prime lies in its ability for users to binge watch an entire season, or at least, to complete an episode that usually ranges from 25 – 60 minutes. Meanwhile, if you’re looking for a quick video, there’s YouTube for that. Hence, it’s rather difficult to see where Quibi fits in this spectrum.
However, the app was downloaded over 300,000 times on the day it was launched and was the top three app on the Apple App Store, as of yesterday. Together with the COVID-19 crisis which continues to keep most of us confined to our homes, there may be a slight hope for Quibi as we seem to have more time on our hands to experiment with this experimental streaming app.
Source: TechCrunch, CNET
