One month after launch, Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg has touched a bit on how the new video streaming service is performing and what new features are coming soon.
Katzenberg says that Quibi has been downloaded 3.5 million times since its launch on April 6, with around 1.3 million active users. However, that's not quite as high as Quibi would've hoped.
"Is it the avalanche of people that we wanted and were going for out of launch?" Katzenberg said in an interview with The New York Times. "The answer is no. It’s not up to what we wanted. It’s not close to what we wanted."
He added that Quibi's sale of "Daily Essentials" news shows from the likes of NBC and BBC haven't been as popular as expected. It's said that Quibi will reduce its projected figures for the first year of adoption that included 7 million users.
As for why Quibi hasn't taken off as expected, Katzenberg blamed the ongoing pandemic. "I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus," he explained. "Everything."
The good news here is that Quibi is planning new features that could help attract new users and convince existing subscribers to stick around. Starting this week, Quibi users on iPhone will be able to watch shows on their TVs. This feature will be coming to Android in "a few more weeks."
Quibi is also planning to add support for sharing its content on social media. Details on this feature are light, but it should help Quibi users to share funny or interesting moments on social media and then help get people talking more about the service.
Have you tried Quibi yet? If so, what do you think of it?