Quibi, the short-form mobile-only streaming service, is shutting down after just 6 months of operations due to an unviable business model. The streaming service's woes began relatively early on in its life, when it lost a massive number of initial users when its free trial expired.

Quibi started off with some promise, raising $2 billion in funding from major industry names such as Disney (NYSE: DIS) and Viacom (NASDAQ: VIAC) and featuring big names from the entertainment industry. Founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, a former executive at Disney a co-founder of DreamWorks, and headed by former HP (NYSE: HPQ) CEO Meg Whitman, the company showed promise. Quibi's short-form content, featuring stories typically not exceeding 10 minutes in length, was unique among paid streaming services.

Quibi's content isn't, however, unique among streaming services in general. Short-form content is available for free from numerous platforms, including YouTube (NASDAQ: GOOGL), the most used streaming platform and most visited website on the internet. Additionally, Quibi notoriously lacked any smash hits, putting it at a considerable disadvantage against competitors such as Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) and Hulu (parent company Disney).

"Quibi was founded to create the next generation of storytelling," Katzenberg said. "The world has changed dramatically since Quibi launched and our standal...