History
Quickflix was founded by Bill Keech, Sam McDonagh and Stephen Langsford, who were shortly afterwards joined by Simon Hodge. Langsford and Hodge would continue as long serving executives and directors following the company's launch in 2003 in Perth, Western Australia.[8] The company would attract prominent business figures Bruce Gordon, Lachlan Murdoch and Domenic Carosa as investors.[9]
Quickflix was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2005,[10] but was delisted in 2017.[11] In December 2005, Quickflix acquired rival company HomeScreen, a move that doubled the Quickflix customer base.[12] In 2006, Quickflix launched movie downloads, competing against BigPond Movies.[13] In April 2011, Quickflix announced the dispatch of their 10 millionth DVD, a copy of Shrek Forever After.[14]
In July 2011, BigPond Movies revealed that they would no longer continue their DVD-by-mail service, selling their library of 50,000 titles to Quickflix.[15][16] In that same month Quickflix announced that they would launch a subscription video streaming service initially on a selection of Sony's internet-connected devices, with the service eventually launching on 27 October 2011.[17] Quickflix streaming became available on PCs and Macintosh computers, and on the PlayStation 3 later that same year. In January 2012, Quickflix announced a deal that would bring their service to Samsung TVs, mobiles and tablets,[18] with Microsoft signing a deal to make Quickflix streaming available on Xbox 360 consoles later that year. The Quickflix app was installed as a stock app on a number of
In March 2012 Quickflix launched their streaming service in New Zealand.[20] That same month, US premium TV network HBO, a division of global media giant Time Warner, invested $10 million in Quickflix for a strategic stake.[13][21] However the following year saw the company face a temporary cash flow crisis that saw four of its six board members quit and its CEO depart.[9]
By 2014 Quickflix was established as Australia's leading streaming service, and had boasted more than 182,000 subscribers as of June of that year.[1] However, facing stagnating subscriber numbers,[13] on 21 July 2014 it was announced that Nine Entertainment had acquired all of HBO's shares in Quickflix, thus becoming Quickflix's major investor.[22] Nine paid $1 million for HBO's shares, just 10% of what HBO paid.[13] By the following year a number of streaming competitors had launched in Australia: Netflix, Presto and Stan, the latter a joint venture between Quickflix major shareholder Nine and Fairfax Media. With their entry, Quickflix began to haemorrhage subscribers.[3]
On 26 April 2016, Quickflix Australia announced that the company had entered voluntary administration, appointing Ferrier Hodgson to oversee the process. Quickflix blamed the company's largest shareholder, Nine Entertainment for their predicament, as they had refused to restructure the shares it had acquired from HBO, which would have enabled Quickflix to raise additional capital for investing in content and marketing to enable it to compete in an increasingly crowded market.[23][13] According to the company, Nine would only accept the restructure in exchange for a multi-million dollar payment in cash, which the company did not have, or have Quickflix transfer its customers to Stan, which the company refused.[13] Nine also blocked a prospective deal with rival Presto,[13] and the company was also forced to abort the planned acquisition of an unnamed Chinese film and media company.[24] It was reported that in the five years to 2015 the company had posted net losses of more than $40 million in total.[9]
On 4 October 2016, U.S.-based Karma Media Holdings acquired Quickflix.[25] Quickflix was relaunched in December 2016, offering a revamped streaming subscription which includes rental of up to four premium titles a month in addition to the set streaming library, and a renewed focus on new release movies.[26][27] However in the subsequent years Quickflix's streaming library saw increasingly limited updates,[28] and the company's focus largely returned to offering disc rental by mail to a niche consumer base.[29]
In May 2021 a winding up application by EnergyAustralia was lodged against the company.[30] Quickflix was wound up by court order in September 2021.[4]
