The original idea for Quibi was that it was a video streaming service only meant for mobile devices. The bite-sized episodes were meant for quick consumption for when you don’t have time to sit down in front of your TV and watch 40-minute episodes or 2-hour movies. But because it launched in the middle of a pandemic where people now have time to watch on bigger screens because they’re quarantined, they had to change tactics. Now they’re adding a casting feature so you can watch their videos on your TV screen.
Quibi users will now have the option to cast content from their smartphone to a Chromecast-supported TV. Previously, they also added AirPlay support for Apple users and now it’s time for those who have Chromecast-enabled screens. This way, you can watch all episodes of Chrissy’s Court with your family and you even might be able to binge the entire season because each episode is just 10 minutes and there are only 12 episodes.
That’s how Quibi was built originally, as a short-form video service that was designed for mobile use. If 10 minutes or so was what you could spare in the middle of a busy day, then they were hoping you’d catch an episode of their show instead of watching part of a full episode of a show on Netflix. But little did Quibi know that movie theaters would shut down and people would be staying at home and would have more time to watch.
It’s still too early to know how Quibi is actually doing. While they were able to get two million downloads during their first week, this is probably due to their free trial period. After that though, then we’ll see how many actually stuck with them and paid the $5 per month (with ads) or $8 per month (without ads) subscription fee. Marketing wise, it hasn’t taken off as expected, but that may also be because we’ve been busy with a lot of other, more significant things.
Now we’ll see if casting support will actually help them get better numbers. The Chromecast support seems to be available only for iPhones for now but it will come to Android smartphones soon as well.
