Streaming service Quibi officially shuts down

Quibi officially shut down on Tuesday, according to a report in Variety, marking the end for the short-lived subscription service. 

The Quibi app was no longer operable, according to the news outlet, and was no longer allowing users to sign in or access any of its content. The app will remain on users’ devices until they delete it. 

Quibi announced in October that it was shutting down, just six months after it launched in April amid high expectations. 

In an interview with CNBC at the time, Quibi co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg admitted that the company failed because it “asked people to pay for it before they actually understood what it was.” 

The streaming service — which promised “fresh content from today’s biggest stars, one quick bite at a time” — raised $1.75 billion in funding between 2018 and 2020 before it launched. 

However, the company struggled to maintain a foothold in an increasingly crowded mobile video space and chaotic news cycle dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. 

According to a New York Times report in May, Quibi fell out of the top 50 most downloaded free iPhone apps, with only 1.3 million active users, well short of expectations. 

“It was clear that for whatever reason this was not going to be as successful as Jeffrey and I hoped,” co-founder Meg Whitman told CNBC. “The honorable thing to do is return money to shareholders when we knew this was not going to have a path forward as a viable, stand-alone business.”

Quibi attracted 710,000 subscriber households as of the third quarter of 2020, according to Variety, down from 1.1 million in the second quarter. The service cost $4.99 per month with ads and $7.99 per month without ads.