generic Quibi launches amid coronavirus outbreak
Quibi, a new short-form video app, launched on Monday and is expected to attract millions of subscribers. Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi and Dan Howley discuss the details.
Video Transcript
BRIAN SOZZI: Let's bring in our tech editor, Dan Howley. Dan, good to see you. And amidst all of this, Quibi is launching today. What is Quibi?
DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, Quibi launching at probably the worst time for them. Specifically, it's a video platform that's built specifically for smartphones. So it's only on smartphones. And it's meant to provide these kind of bite-size-- that's where the name comes from, quick bites-- of entertainment. You're not going to get anything that lasts anything near what you would expect a normal video, show, TV show, movie, anything along those lines to last. We're talking seconds, here. And really, what it's going to do is bring together celebrities from across the spectrum and put them into this platform for your smartphone. There's a free version that has advertised-- sorry, there's a free trial. And then there's an advertised version that comes for $5 month, and advertisement-free version that's $8 a month.
It really seems to be this very controversial kind of platform, though, because people are taking very separate stances on it. They feel like it's going to fail out of the gate or they feel like it's going to last. We will see. But again, this was something that was originally launched as kind of a distraction for people when they're on the subway or when they're in the line for their coffee. And this is really not designed for that.
BRIAN SOZZI: No, Dan. If I had to choose between Quibi and Netflix, I'm going with Netflix. Just got to say. All right. Dan Howley, thank you.
