There seems to be a countless number of streaming services available today, and soon we're going to get one more.
Quibi is launching on April 6th, 2020. Pricing will start at $4.99 per month for the ad-supported version of the service, and you'll also have the option of forking over $7.99 per month if you'd like to avoid ads.
T-Mobile customers will get Quibi service bundled into their plan, CNBC reports that T-Mobile COO Mike Sievert said, but there are no other details available about that right now. T-Mobile struck a partnership with Quibi last year.
When it comes to content, Quibi aims to launch 175 shows with 8,500 episodes in its first year. The company wants to make sure that you'll always have something new to watch, and so its goal is to launch at least three hours of new content every weekday.
There will be three types of content available on Quibi: movies that are shown in chapters, episodic shows, and daily content. Quibi is placing a focus on short content — its name stands for "quick bite" — and so its movie chapters will run 7-10 minutes and the daily news programs will be 5-6 minutes. Ads will be short, too, with sub-5 minute shows getting 6-10-second ads.
Despite the fact that it's brand new, Quibi has signed on some big names to provide content for its service. Those include the likes of Bill Murray, Steven Spielberg, and Chrissy Teigen, and there will be news programs from the BBC, NBC News, and 60 Minutes.
Another major feature of Quibi is called "Turnstyle". With it, you'll be able to switch between portrait and landscape mode on your phone or tablet to get a different point of view. As noted by The Verge, every Quibi show and ad is filmed in both portrait and landscape orientations and both are streamed simultaneously to your device, so the video will switch immediately when you change orientation.
One show. One screen. Two perspectives.
Hold the phone horizontally = Cinematic perspective.
Hold the phone vertically = The character’s phone takes over your phone. #QuibiCES pic.twitter.com/mANwJJKsGU— WTFisQuibi (@Quibi) January 8, 2020
Quibi is headed up by CEO Meg Whitman, who you may remember spent some time as CEO of HP while it was still involved in mobile with webOS. Jeffrey Katzenberg is both Quibi's founder and its chairman of the board.
There's a ton of streaming content out there, but Quibi is trying to stand out with its bite-size content. We'll have to wait and see if that strategy will work for the service, but we can see how that short video content could be attractive to some people who want to watch something but don't have long to catch up on the news or a movie.
Does Quibi sound interesting to you?
