Quibi has a “meh” opening day with only 300,000 downloads

Yesterday, the world was formally introduced to Quibi, a new mobile-only streaming service that delivers quick, 10-minute-at-a-time episodes designed to be digested in small chunks. The name Quibi stands for “quick bites” — I’ll let you decide if that’s clever or obnoxious.

Anyway, with $1.75 billion in funding, there’s been a lot of hype around the launch of the service, or at least a lot of ads.

Did that translate into a stellar first day on the market? Well, if you compare it to other streaming services out there right now, no. According to The Wrap, Quibi was downloaded only 300,000 times on its first day out. While that’s not a small number, it’s teeny-tiny next to something like Disney+, which nabbed 4 million subscribers when it launched in April.

Now, it’s a little unfair to compare something as small-scale as Quibi to a juggernaut like Disney, but also keep in mind that Quibi has a 90-day free trial, which is well beyond what other streamers are offering at the moment, and it still couldn’t manage many first-day subscribers.

To be fair, we should wait a while before we declare Quibi a failure, but this was probably the wrong time to launch a mobile-only service designed to be watched on the go. With the coronavirus quarantine in effect, who’s going anywhere? According to Deadline, founder Jeffrey Katzenberg — formerly a major player at Disney during the studio’s early ’90s revival — and CEO Meg Whitman considered delaying the launch until the pandemic had passed, but clearly they went ahead. Maybe not the best idea?

It makes me wonder how WarnerMedia’s new streaming service, HBO Max, will fare when it comes out in May. Is now the perfect time to release a sit-on-the-couch-and-watch streaming service, or are people happy with what they have? I guess we’ll see.

As for Quibi itself, the service doesn’t lack for content. There are 50 shows on there, and they come in a lot of varieties. That’s Liam Hemsworth at the top of the page — he stars with Christoph Waltz in Most Dangerous Game, a new take on Richard Connell’s classic story about people hunting people. Quibi has a nature documentary hosted by Reese Witherspoon (Fierce Queens), a quick-fire comedy show about pop culture past hosted by Will Arnett (Memory Hole), a thriller starring Game of Thrones veteran Sophie Turner (Survive) and much more. But is this the content people are looking for?

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h/t The A.V. Club