https://help.quibi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042455452-Can-I-...
The only on mobile thing may have been necessary for the business model.
Maybe "compared to web pages". But very skeptical it's a meaningful cost compared to production or subscription prices. Even going with a third party CDN you're probably not paying more than ¢1/GB of transfer. For 720P h.264 that's about about 2GB, or 2¢, per hour of content transferred. How many pennies per month do you need before it's a meaningful portion of the $7 subscription price?
I know the sharing feature would have been so much better I assumed they would add this soon. If I watch something and have no-one to share it with in my social circle it loses its buzz appeal. Like the most un-entertaining crap (90day finance) is interesting because the people I know also watch it. It becomes a topic. Telling someone about a show they can't access or see even a clip of it online to find out if they are interested in paying $$$ for it seems like a failed business plan in our internet based world.
Whereas success means "exceeded expectations."
Even if an objective measure (revenue, users etc...) is higher for the "failure" than the "success."
Lot ot things can still happen. They can release a show that'll become viral and bring them million of subscribers.
But of course there are some very strange decisions:
- Mobile-only is weird. Why not make mobile a priority, but people are used to watch shows on their TV or PC. And you cannot watch things with multiple other people. Even with one person, it's not really practical.
- Did not allow screenshot: for a mobile only, it's strange, they failed to understand something about the internet. Heck, they could have made a button to annotate and share a screenshot on social media in-app since they're in mobile-only. That would have been something people are used to. But at least allow people to share the content they like. You're just forbidding free advertisment.