Upcoming short-form video streaming service Quibi details new features including Turnstyle, which lets videos play well in both portrait and landscape modes
after raising $1.4 billion before launch TechCrunch : Quibi's Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman offer a deeper look at the new streaming service Fortune : I'm a Millennial, and I Don't Understand What Quibi Is Trying to Do William Feuer / CNBC : Quibi streaming service will cost $5 a month with ads, or $8 without Joan E. Solsman / CNET : Quibi mobile-streaming service wants CES to know WTF it is now Adam Rogers / Wired : Hollywood Bets On a Future of Quick Clips and Tiny Screens Alex Cranz / Gizmodo : Quibi Is Either a Clever Gimmick or the Future of Entertainment Stuart Dredge / Music Ally : Video-streaming service Quibi raises $400m of new funding MacDailyNews : Quibi streaming service will cost 5 dollars per month with ads, or 8 dollars without Alex Wagner / TmoNews : Quibi will be bundled with T-Mobile customers' plans Dan Barrett / Always Be Watching : Quibi unveiled. ALSO: Supermarket Sweep returns. Dallas Lawrence / VentureBeat : Quibi shows off new snack-size, mobile-first streaming service Matthew Field / Telegraph : Netflix rival films shows that ‘flip to vertical’ as streamers switch to smartphones Allison Matyus / Digital Trends : Quibi wants to be the streaming service for people short on time Kelsey Sutton / Adweek : Quibi Debuts Turnstyle Mobile Video Tech at CES 2020 Ryan Whitwam / Android Police : Quibi is a new streaming service with short films that can be viewed in portrait or landscape Keith Wagstaff / Mashable : Streaming service Quibi will launch with more than 175 new shows Jared Newman / Fast Company : Why Quibi's snack-size streaming service could actually live up to the hype Sean Burch / The Wrap : Quibi Executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman Give CES First Look at Streaming Service Cynthia Littleton / Variety : Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman Raise the Curtain on Quibi at CES Ashley Rodriguez / Business Insider : Quibi's CEO explains the video startup's business model and how it booked $150 million … Tweets: Meg Graham / @megancgraham : Quibi's almost here: The service will launch on April 6, 2020 with an ad-supported option for $4.99 per month and an ad-free service for $7.99 per month. https://www.cnbc.com/... via @WillFOIA Rani Molla / @ranimolla : I don't think using Yahoo purple is a good idea, Quibi https://www.theverge.com/... Joshua Benton / @jbenton : Not the best sign that Quibi's top talent talks up their involvement by saying: “I was unable to use rational thinking when I decided to do this. The best way I can explain it is that it's as if a Mafia family forced me to under threat of violence” https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : Katzenberg also told us Quibi is the “third generation of film narrative”, so, you know. It was a ride. https://www.theverge.com/... Nilay Patel / @reckless : Just a brief glimpse of what our Quibi briefing with Jeffrey Katzenberg was like. Could honestly talk to him and Meg Whitman for hours. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... @gamoid : It's really, super-duper difficult to see the bear case here. https://twitter.com/... Devindra Hardawar / @devindra : Quibi is still a bit baffling, but this unique ability to watch videos in portrait and landscape mode has me intrigued https://twitter.com/... Sara Fischer / @sarafischer : Some other @quibi nuggets: 💰 Whitman says she expects Quibi to be profitable in less than 10 years but a little more than 2. 📲 Says she thinks the majority of subscriptions will be the ad-supported option https://www.axios.com/... Steve Kovach / @stevekovach : They should call it........ Go90 https://twitter.com/... WTFisQuibi / @quibi : To tackle this challenge, we invented a new mobile video format we call TURNSTYLE. #QuibiCES https://twitter.com/... Taylor Lorenz / @taylorlorenz : This sounds annoying https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Quibi's CES appearance is the marketing pivot point after a year of assembling supply: Katzenberg and Whitman spent early 2019 landing top talent across movies and TV, then set pricing in June with a $4.99 ad tier and $7.99 ad-free tier ahead of an April 6, 2020 launch. With $1.4 billion raised and more than 175 shows committed, the remaining question was differentiation — and Turnstyle, which lets every show play natively in portrait or landscape, is the answer being demoed here.
The feature matters because Quibi's entire thesis is mobile-only premium video, a format bet sitting between Hollywood long-form and free short-form apps. In hindsight the corpus shows how little the format carried: the service imploded within months of launch, and by its November shutdown had just 450K paying subscribers against a 7.4M first-year target.
First-order effects
- Turnstyle forces Quibi's roster of A-list creators to produce every episode so it works in both orientations — a production constraint no other streaming buyer imposes, layered on top of the costs-plus-20% deals (up to $6M/hour) already promised.
- At CES, Katzenberg and Whitman are reframing the pitch from 'short videos' to a patented-feeling format feature, trying to give the $4.99/$7.99 tiers something TikTok and YouTube cannot copy from licensed Hollywood content.
Second-order effects
- The T-Mobile bundle becomes the make-or-break distribution channel: if Turnstyle alone doesn't convert, carrier bundling is the fallback lever for hitting the 7.4M first-year subscriber target priced into the content spend.
- Rival streamers face no immediate pressure to match Turnstyle — but if it works, phone-first viewing becomes a format arms race that favors whoever owns the handset relationship over whoever owns the library.
Third-order effects
- Quibi's trajectory — record pre-launch funding, star talent, a genuine format innovation, then closure with under 10% of its subscriber target — argues that premium short-form fails not on features but on willingness-to-pay, pushing the industry toward ad-supported or bundled models for phone-first video.
- If the pattern holds, mobile carriers and device makers gain leverage as gatekeepers for new streaming entrants, while standalone subscription launches without an installed base face a structurally higher bar.
The trend: Premium streaming entrants are learning that proprietary format features cannot substitute for distribution reach and audience fit, shifting phone-first video toward bundles and ad-supported tiers.