Quibi launched in April as a mobile-only streaming service, being promoted as a way to watch content on the go and in between daily activities. Not only did stay at home orders essentially eliminate the need for an on the go service, but users were quick to show disinterest in a service that wouldn’t allow them to watch content on a screen larger than the size of their smartphone.
The most recent update of the Quibi app for iPhones included AirPlay support, finally giving some users to ability to watch Quibi content on their TVs. Chromecast support will be added in June.
Chief Product Officer Tom Conrad announced the update on Twitter.
Sure we designed Quibi for on-the-go, but these days visiting the family room is like a day trip… so AirPlay support is live for iOS in Quibi 1.3. Working hard on Chromecast too which will be available in June.
— Tom Conrad (@tconrad) May 26, 2020
We shared the news in April that Quibi planned to add the casting feature. At that time, despite calling Quibi a mobile-only streaming service before the launch, CEO Meg Whitman said the team always planned to make Quibi available on other devices.
“We’re talking to the engineering team about—we had always planned to cast to your TV—so we’re going to see if we can accelerate that in the engineering roadmap,” Whitman told CNBC’s Squawk on the Street. “We’ll eventually get there but it was never a part of the launch. If we’d known about [covid-19], maybe it would have been.”
The app has been off to a rocky start, which founder Jeffrey Katzenberg acknowledged in an interview with New York Times, saying “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus.” Quibi currently has about 3.5 million app downloads and 1.3 million active users, according to Katzenberg, though the number is closer to 2.9 million downloads, according to Sensor Tower.
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