The recently released short format mobile video service Quibi will now support AirPlay protocol. This means Quibi, which originally designed for mobiles, can be streamed from your phone to TVs and other devices that run on Apple’s AirPlay protocol.
Quibi founded in August 2018 in Los Angeles is led by Meg Whitman as CEO. It delivers short 5 to 10-minute videos to the young-adult audience who are busy to sit down and stream movies or long TV shows. It raised around $1.8 billion from major production houses like WarnerMedia, Sony Pictures, The Walt Disney Company, NBC and Alibaba Group.
Quibi was launched on April 6th and is available in the United States of America and Canada.In the first week, the app has seen 1.7 million downloads and has been downloaded 3.5 million times till date.
Jeffery Katzenberg, the founder of Quibi, said that the customer response was “not close to what we expected,” acknowledging, “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus.” This is a very tepid response.
The timing couldn’t have been worse as the app made its debut at a time when people can’t go anywhere due to lockdown orders. This led to an explosion of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime.
With stay-at-home orders, many users asked why the service is not available on TV. Mr Katzenberg, who pitched Quibi as a smartphone-only app, has now backtracked and have allowed content to stream on TVs with AirPlay protocol.
According to Tom Conrad, the Chief Product Officer at Quibi, is “working hard” to bring support for Chromecast as well. Sources suggest this could be as early as June. This will allow Android users to cast content from the app onto their TVs or Chromecast supported devices.
Nevertheless, Quibi has significant limitations that won’t allow its users to share the content. The short-format video app doesn’t allow users to take screenshots and share them on social media. Mr Katzenberg said in an interview that users will soon be able to share the content on social media but has not indicated how Quibi will lift the restrictions.
Coronavirus has affected the launch of Quibi. But TV casting for both Android and Apple devices and loosening the restrictions on users will do good for the video service mobile app.
