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A Format Built for One Hand: Duanju on Home Soil

It’s a format, rather than a company, that begins the history of Chinese short drama. The word duanju, the Chinese term that “short drama” translates literally, stands for vertical-format series framed at 9:16 for a phone held in one hand. Since episodes last between one and two minutes, a single title usually stretches across 20 to 100 instalments. The narratives build on a dependable, well-worn kit of premises: tales of revenge, billionaire and CEO romance, hidden-identity reveals and family conflict. Being understandable in seconds matters for every one of those premises, because a whole episode has to land before the viewer’s thumb short reels app scrolls on. Conventional television rarely had to ask how to sell a story in slices small enough to price one at a time, yet seen as a business, this format settles exactly that question. Microdrama, vertical drama and mobile drama are some of the other terms under which English-speaking audiences now encounter the same product. Across every stage of the timeline below, that pay-per-piece logic is the common thread.

2020: The NRTA Puts the Genre on the Official Map

It is a regulatory milestone, not a commercial one, that comes first. Back in 2020, China’s regulator, the NRTA, officially acknowledged duanju as a genre. Since recognition converts a loose category of online clips into something that can be classified, counted and overseen, that step matters more than it might seem. Later figures about the sector can be compared at all only because a named genre can be followed from one year to the next. Regulatory attention can cut both ways for a young industry, and nothing about this guaranteed commercial success. Recognition did, however, move short drama from the fringes of online video toward the status of an industry with its own data. Four years afterward, that data revealed a sector big enough to be measured against the country’s film theaters.

2024: The Year Short Drama Overtook the Box Office

For the clearest measure of how far the format had come, look at the home-market figures for 2024. Short drama revenue in China climbed to 50.5 billion yuan, or about $7 billion, according to data made public in mid-2025. That was the first year the sector brought in more than China’s box office, a headline crossover for an industry founded on one- and two-minute episodes. That year’s audience was estimated at 662 million viewers. Producers rolled out more than 30,000 titles over the same twelve months. Because a business putting out tens of thousands of titles a year is trialing premises at scale, that volume says as much about the industry’s structure as the revenue does. It also signals fierce competition, since every one of those titles is fighting for the same few minutes of a viewer’s day. The push abroad had not, however, waited for this milestone; several Chinese-linked companies were already marketing the same model abroad by 2024.

Moving Abroad: The Chinese-Linked Apps Powering the Export Wave

ReelShort came first out of the gate, arriving in August 2022. The app is run 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. Jiuzhou Culture introduced ShortTV for the United States, Canada and Australia, along with 99TV for Southeast Asia. The evidence suggests ShortMax is the same app under another name, although no rename has been formally announced. DramaWave, released through Kunlun Tech’s Skywork AI business, marked the company’s entry in September 2024, and its FreeReels app topped global downloads in the first quarter of 2026, according to Sensor Tower. Over and over, a Western-facing entity in California, Singapore or Hong Kong stands in front of a business whose capital or parentage leads back to China. For people who watch dramas online in English, that corporate map is mostly invisible; what they see is a vertical streaming service with a free opening and a paywall.

Dubbed Imports Against Western Originals

What to fill the apps with became the strategic question as soon as they existed. Jiuzhou’s answer, as reported by China Daily in January 2024, relied heavily on its domestic catalogue. About 80 percent of the more than 600 mini-dramas it had made for overseas markets 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. Since dubbing extends the life of titles already paid for, it makes obvious sense for a company with a deep domestic library. Western originals cost more: TheWrap cites $150,000 to $300,000 per series shot in eight to ten days. Still, they reach the audience without a translation layer. This audience is well defined: TheWrap reported in October 2024 that about 75 percent of ReelShort’s users were women and about half were in the US. DramaBox has a production team in Los Angeles, and its lineup includes titles such as Fake Dating My Rich Nemesis. Most notably, Holywater shows that the originals market has also attracted companies without Chinese roots; its My Drama app took an equity investment from Fox Entertainment in October 2025, plus a Fox commitment to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years.

2025 and 2026: What Market Trackers Report

The overseas business was drawing the attention of several research firms by 2025, and their estimates 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 supplying 49 percent, or roughly $350 million. For the full year, Sensor Tower’s data puts in-app revenue at about $2.8 billion to $3 billion, up roughly 115 percent, and different reports of the same dataset cite slightly different totals. A broader view comes from Omdia, which puts total microdrama revenue at $11 billion in 2025, including $3 billion earned outside China, and forecasts $14 billion by the end of 2026. In 2026, Omdia also expects the US to reach $1.5 billion, half of all revenue outside China. Media Partners Asia, in estimates reported in August 2026, pegged revenue outside China at $2.7 billion for 2025, $3.6 billion for 2026 and $9.5 billion by 2031. For ReelShort, MPA puts revenue of $785 million in 2025 and forecasts $1.05 billion in 2026, with about $40 million in net profit. Its market-share estimates are the most telling for this timeline: ReelShort with about 29 percent outside China, then DramaBox at 21 percent, DramaWave at 13 percent and GoodShort at 6 percent, roughly 69 percent combined for four apps with Chinese links.

Looking Ahead Along the Timeline

Several patterns stand out when the milestones are lined up end to end. The first pattern is one of scale: the overseas business still looks small beside its origin, since 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 over year, after triple-digit growth across 2025. At the top, competition has grown closer too: DramaBox and ReelShort each brought in about $140 million in that quarter. Prices vary by country, platform and promotion, but monetization has taken on a recognizable shape, with a weekly VIP pass costing about $19.99 in the US App Store as of September 2026 for apps including ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave, GoodShort and My Drama. Production is the area most likely to change next, because DramaWave, whose annualized revenue topped $700 million by the second quarter of 2026, reportedly creates 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 core offer whether dubbed imports, Western originals or AI output take the next phase.