A Format Designed for a Single Hand: Duanju in Its Home Market
It is a screen format, not a corporation, that opens the history of Chinese short drama. The Chinese term duanju, which “short drama” renders literally, refers to vertical shows shot at 9:16 for a phone held in one hand. Since episodes last between one and two minutes, a single title typically stretches across 20 to 100 instalments. The storylines draw on a dependable toolkit of premises: billionaire and CEO romance, revenge plots, family feuds vertical video drama and hidden-identity reveals. Being graspable in seconds matters for each of those premises, because an entire episode has to hit home before the viewer’s thumb scrolls on. In business terms, the format tackles a question that conventional television seldom faced: how can you sell a story in fragments small enough to price one at a time. Microdrama, vertical drama and mobile drama are among the other labels under which English-language audiences now come across the same product. That pay-per-piece logic is the thread that runs through every stage of the timeline laid out here.
2020: The NRTA Formally Recognizes the Genre
The earliest milestone is regulatory, not a commercial one. In 2020, China’s regulator, the NRTA, formally recognized duanju as a genre. The step matters more than it might look, because recognition converts a vague category of online clips into something that can be classified, counted and overseen. Following a named genre from one year to the next is feasible, and that is what allows later statistics about the sector to be compared at all. Commercial success was not ensured by any of this, and for a new industry, regulatory attention can cut both ways. The effect was to push short drama from the margins of online video toward the status of an industry with its own data. A sector big 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
The domestic figures for 2024 are the sharpest measure of how far the format had come. In China, short drama revenue hit 50.5 billion yuan, which is about $7 billion, going by data published in mid-2025. For an industry founded on one- and two-minute episodes, it was a symbolic crossover: the first year the sector earned more than China’s box office. More than 30,000 titles came out that year. Figures placed the audience over the same twelve months at 662 million viewers. A business releasing tens of thousands of titles a year is testing premises at scale, so that volume says as much about the industry’s structure as the revenue does. Every one of those titles is vying for the same few minutes of a viewer’s day, which also points to intense competition. By 2024, however, several Chinese-linked companies were already selling the same model abroad, as the overseas push had not waited for this milestone.
Going Overseas: The Chinese-Linked Apps Powering the Export Wave
ReelShort was first out of the gate, debuting in August 2022. The app is operated by Crazy Maple Studio of Sunnyvale, California, and the studio is supported by China-based COL Group. DramaBox followed in April 2023; it is built by Beijing Dianzhong Technology and owned by that company’s Singapore subsidiary, StoryMatrix. In June 2023 GoodShort launched under Singapore New Reading Technology; the company is reportedly connected to Beijing New Reading Times, but that parent link rests on a weaker source. In addition to 99TV for Southeast Asia, Jiuzhou Culture introduced 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. Kunlun Tech joined in September 2024 with DramaWave, released through its Skywork AI business, and its FreeReels app topped global downloads in the first quarter of 2026, according to Sensor Tower. What recurs is a Western-facing entity in California, Singapore or Hong Kong fronting a business whose capital or parentage goes back to China. This corporate map is largely invisible to people who watch dramas online in English, who see a vertical streaming service with a free opening and a paywall.
| Company | Service | Chinese link | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crazy Maple Studio (Sunnyvale, California) | ReelShort | Backed by China-based COL Group | August 2022 |
| StoryMatrix Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) | DramaBox | A Singapore subsidiary of Beijing Dianzhong Technology | April 2023 |
| Singapore New Reading Technology Pte. Ltd. | GoodShort | Reportedly under 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 app | Not confirmed; highest global downloads in Q1 2026 |
| Holywater (founded in Kyiv, 2020) | My Drama | None at all; Fox Entertainment equity stake since October 2025 | Spring 2024 |
Dubbed Imports Against Western Originals
The strategic question, after the apps existed, was what to put in them. According to a China Daily report from January 2024, Jiuzhou responded by leaning heavily on its domestic catalogue. Of more than 600 mini-dramas it had made for overseas markets, about 80 percent were dubbed Chinese adaptations and 20 percent were original overseas productions. A 70-episode series cost $100,000 to $150,000 according to the same report. For a company with a deep domestic library, dubbing makes clear sense, because it extends the life of titles that have already been paid for. Western originals reach the audience without a translation layer, but they cost more, with TheWrap citing $150,000 to $300,000 per series shot in eight to ten days. TheWrap reported in October 2024 that about 75 percent of ReelShort’s users were women and about half were in the US, which shows that this audience is well defined. With a production team in Los Angeles, DramaBox offers titles such as Fake Dating My Rich Nemesis in its library. Companies without Chinese roots have also been drawn into the originals market. The most visible is Holywater: in October 2025 its My Drama app secured an equity investment from Fox Entertainment, together with a Fox commitment to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years.
2025 and 2026: What Market Trackers Report
Several research firms were monitoring the overseas business by 2025, and their numbers diverge in instructive ways. Sensor Tower pegged worldwide in-app revenue for short-drama apps at about $700 million in the first quarter of 2025, with the United States contributing 49 percent, or roughly $350 million. Over the full year, Sensor Tower’s data places in-app revenue at about $2.8 billion to $3 billion, up roughly 115 percent; different reports of the same dataset give slightly different totals. A broader view comes from Omdia, which estimates total microdrama revenue at $11 billion in 2025, with $3 billion earned outside China, and projects $14 billion by the end of 2026. Omdia also projects the US to hit $1.5 billion in 2026, or half of all revenue outside China. Media Partners Asia put revenue outside China at $2.7 billion for 2025, $3.6 billion for 2026 and $9.5 billion by 2031 in estimates reported in August 2026. MPA puts ReelShort’s revenue at $785 million in 2025 and projects $1.05 billion in 2026, with about $40 million in net profit. MPA’s market-share estimates are the most revealing for this timeline: ReelShort with about 29 percent outside China, followed by 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 Ahead
Lined up end to end, the milestones reveal a few clear patterns. The first is that the overseas business still looks small next to its origin, since Omdia’s figures imply that most microdrama revenue in 2025 was earned inside China. The second is a likely easing of growth, with Sensor Tower placing the first quarter of 2026 at about $750 million, up 20 percent year on year, after triple-digit growth across 2025. Among the leaders, competition has tightened too: DramaBox and ReelShort each brought in about $140 million in that quarter. Prices vary by country, platform and promotion, but monetization has settled into a recognizable shape, with a weekly VIP pass costing about $19.99 in the US App Store as of September 2026 for apps such as ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave, GoodShort and My Drama. Production is the area most likely to change next, because DramaWave, whose annualized revenue passed $700 million by the second quarter of 2026, reportedly produces 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, stays the product whether dubbed imports, Western originals or AI output win the next phase.
