A One-Handed Format: Duanju Where It Began
It’s a format, not a company, that opens the tale of Chinese short drama. The word duanju, the Chinese term that “short drama” translates literally, stands for vertical series set short drama cast at 9:16 for a phone gripped in one hand. A single title generally extends over 20 to 100 instalments, with each episode playing for between one and two minutes. A proven stock of premises drives the plots: tales of revenge, billionaire and CEO romance, identity reveals and family conflict. Being graspable in seconds matters for every one of those setups, because a whole episode has to land before the viewer’s thumb swipes away. In business terms, the format tackles a question that regular television rarely had to ask: how do you sell a story in slices small enough to price one at a time. That same product now meets English-speaking audiences under other labels, including microdrama, vertical drama and mobile drama. This pay-per-piece logic connects every stage of the chronology below.
2020: The NRTA Puts the Genre on the Map
The first milestone is regulatory, not a commercial one. In 2020, the NRTA, China’s regulator, formally recognized duanju as a genre. Since recognition turns a loose category of online clips into something that can be classified, counted and overseen, that step matters more than it might appear. Tracking a named genre from one year to the next is feasible, and that is what lets later figures about the sector to be compared at all. None of this ensured commercial success, and a regulator’s attention can cut both ways for a nascent industry. Its effect was to push short drama from the margins of online video toward the status of an industry with its own data. A sector large enough to be measured against the country’s cinemas is what that data revealed four years later.
2024: The Year Short Drama Out-Earned the Box Office
How far the format had come is captured most clearly by the domestic numbers for 2024. Short drama revenue in China reached 50.5 billion yuan, or about $7 billion, according to numbers made public in mid-2025. For the first time, the sector earned more than China’s box office, a telling crossover for an industry made of one- and two-minute episodes. That year, the audience was estimated at 662 million viewers. Over the same twelve months, producers rolled out more than 30,000 titles. A business releasing tens of thousands of titles a year is testing premises at scale, so that output reveals as much about the industry’s structure as the revenue does. It also signals intense competition, since every one of those titles is competing for the same few minutes of a viewer’s day. Even so, the push abroad had not waited for this milestone: by 2024 several Chinese-linked companies were already offering the same model abroad.
Going Overseas: The Chinese-Linked Apps Driving the Export Wave
First to launch was ReelShort, which went live in August 2022. Behind the app is Crazy Maple Studio of Sunnyvale, California, which is supported by China-based COL Group. In April 2023 DramaBox came next, developed by Beijing Dianzhong Technology and owned by the developer’s Singapore subsidiary, StoryMatrix. GoodShort launched in June 2023 under Singapore New Reading Technology, a company reportedly linked to Beijing New Reading Times, though that parent link rests on a less solid source. Alongside 99TV for Southeast Asia, Jiuzhou Culture launched ShortTV for the United States, Canada and Australia; no rename has been formally announced, but the evidence suggests ShortMax is the same app under a different name. In September 2024, Kunlun Tech came in with DramaWave, published through its Skywork AI business, and according to Sensor Tower the company’s FreeReels app led global downloads in the first quarter of 2026. Over and over, a Western-facing entity in California, Singapore or Hong Kong fronts a business whose capital or parentage traces back to China. What people who watch dramas online in English see is a vertical streaming service with a free opening and a paywall; the corporate map is largely invisible to them.
| Company behind it | Service | Link to China | Launch date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crazy Maple Studio (Sunnyvale, California) | ReelShort | China-based COL Group backs it | August 2022 |
| StoryMatrix Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) | DramaBox | Subsidiary of Beijing Dianzhong Technology | April 2023 |
| Singapore New Reading Technology Pte. Ltd. | GoodShort | Reportedly a part of Beijing New Reading Times | June 2023 |
| SHORTTV LIMITED (Hong Kong) | ShortTV / ShortMax | Jiuzhou Culture; the two names appear to be one app | September 2023 |
| SKYWORK AI PTE LTD | DramaWave | Belongs to Kunlun Tech’s Skywork AI business | September 2024 |
| Kunlun Tech | FreeReels | Kunlun Tech’s own app | Not officially confirmed; top global downloads in Q1 2026 |
| Holywater (founded in Kyiv, 2020) | My Drama | None; Fox Entertainment has held a stake since October 2025 | Spring 2024 |
Dubbed Imports vs. Western Originals
As soon as the apps existed, the strategic question became what to put on them. Jiuzhou’s answer, as reported by China Daily in January 2024, drew heavily on its home catalogue. Of more than 600 mini-dramas it had produced for overseas markets, about 80 percent were dubbed Chinese adaptations and 20 percent were original overseas productions. That same report pegged the cost of a 70-episode series at $100,000 to $150,000. Dubbing stretches the life of titles that have already been paid for, so it makes obvious sense for a company with a deep domestic library. While Western originals cost more, with TheWrap quoting $150,000 to $300,000 per series shot in eight to ten days, they reach the audience without a translation layer. TheWrap reported in October 2024 that about 75 percent of ReelShort’s users were women and about half were in the US, so that audience is well defined. DramaBox’s catalogue includes titles such as Fake Dating My Rich Nemesis, and the company maintains a production team in Los Angeles. The originals market has also pulled in companies without Chinese roots, most prominently Holywater, whose My Drama app received an equity investment from Fox Entertainment in October 2025 along with a Fox commitment to make more than 200 vertical titles over two years.
2025 and 2026: What the Market Trackers Say
By 2025 the overseas business was being followed by several research firms, and their figures vary in revealing ways. In the first quarter of 2025, worldwide in-app revenue for short-drama apps was estimated at about $700 million, according to Sensor Tower, with the United States accounting for 49 percent, or roughly $350 million. Sensor Tower’s data puts whole-year in-app revenue at about $2.8 billion to $3 billion, up roughly 115 percent, although different reports of the same dataset quote slightly different totals. Taking a wider view, Omdia puts total microdrama revenue at $11 billion in 2025, $3 billion of it earned outside China, and forecasts $14 billion by the end of 2026. For 2026, Omdia also expects the US to reach $1.5 billion, half of all revenue outside China. Media Partners Asia placed revenue outside China at $2.7 billion for 2025, $3.6 billion for 2026 and $9.5 billion by 2031 in estimates published in August 2026. For ReelShort, MPA estimates revenue at $785 million in 2025 and forecasts $1.05 billion in 2026, with about $40 million in net profit. The most telling figures for this timeline are its market-share estimates: ReelShort at about 29 percent outside China, DramaBox at 21 percent, DramaWave at 13 percent and GoodShort at 6 percent, roughly 69 percent combined for four apps with Chinese links.
Reading the Timeline Into the Future
When the milestones are placed end to end, several patterns emerge. The first pattern is about scale: the overseas business still looks small beside its origin, as Omdia’s figures imply that most microdrama revenue in 2025 was earned inside China. The second pattern is that growth is likely slowing, as Sensor Tower puts the first quarter of 2026 at about $750 million, up 20 percent year on year, after triple-digit growth across 2025. Competition at the top has grown closer as well, with DramaBox and ReelShort each earning about $140 million in that quarter. Monetization has taken on a consistent shape, and a weekly VIP pass costs about $19.99 in the US App Store for apps such as ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave, GoodShort and My Drama as of September 2026, although prices vary by platform, country and promotion. What is most likely to change next is production, because DramaWave, whose annualized revenue passed $700 million by the second quarter of 2026, reportedly generates more than 80 percent of its new releases with AI. A story sold a minute at a time, the product duanju producers built at home, remains the core offer whether dubbed imports, Western originals or AI output take the next phase.