Earlier this year, a new video streaming service was launched — Quibi, adding to the growing list of media streaming platforms. Now, the company is shutting down, just months after its launch.
The company has not yet notified its final date to the subscribers. Jeffrey Katzenberg, founder of the company, and Meg Whitman, the company’s CEO, seems to have decided to shut down the service and return as much capital to investors as possible instead of risking losing more money.
It is said to layoff employees by offering them a severance package. The company is also reportedly trying to sell rights to some of its content as well as technology. Quibi is said to have approached several major media houses and tech firms without any success.
Quibi was launched in April this year and offered short-form media content designed to watch on smartphones, with each episode or as the company likes to call “chapter” running in under less than 10 minutes.
The content on the platform was formatted in a way that users can view it in portrait as well as landscape mode. Ever since its launch, the company has struggled to get users on board, and launching the service which is meant for consumption on-the-go, during a pandemic also impacted its growth.
