Despite all the bleak news that’s befallen Quibi — chief among them its severe underperformance and its almost total lack of a cultural footprint beyond mockery and doomsday profiles — founder Jeffrey Katzenberg has remained optimistic. They’re still announcing future programs, most notably Kevin Hart’s Die Hart, and they’re reportedly economically solvent for a while at least. And yet there’s still grim news, such as this: According to a new report, 90% of those who signed up for a free trial are ditching the streamer once it’s up.
This comes from The Verge, which reported on a study from mobile analytics firm Sensor Tower. According to them, the bold, mobile-based streamer signed up about 910,000 subscribers in its first days, who elected for a free three-month trial. Once that elapsed, though, only 72,000 stuck around.
That may sounds grim to the layman, but according to The Verge, that’s “not too bad.” A previous Sensor Tower report claimed that the number of initial free-trial Disney+ subscribers was a mere 11%. Thing is, Disney+ managed to wrangle 9.5 million in their initial wave — a number not even comparable to Quibi’s less-than-a-million. Besides, they managed to add tens of millions more since their early days, and now have over 50 million subscribers enjoying things like Hamilton as well as 1966’s Dean Jones dog comedy The Ugly Dachshund.
Then again, Quibi’s total numbers have also allegedly gone up. Quibi reports that 5.6 million have downloaded the app since its April launch, though Sensor Tower claims that number is closer to 4.5 million. A Quibi spokesperson is sticking by their numbers, though, saying the streamer is “above mobile app benchmarks, and we are seeing excellent conversion to paid subscribers — both among our 90-day free trial sign-ups from April, as well as our 14-day free trial sign-ups from May and June.”
Wherever the truth lies, it can be said with confidence that Quibi is at least not off to a smooth start. Katzenberg has put blame on the pandemic quarantine, which did a number on a service offering “quick bite” content, each burst lasting no more than 10 minutes, for those on the go, arriving when no one was going much of anywhere. And since much of the country may either not be going anywhere any time soon or returning to their homes during a second wave of COVID-19, all that can be said is: perhaps Kevin Hart will save the day.
(Via The Verge)
