A One-Handed Format: Duanju on Home Soil
Instead of a corporation, the story of Chinese short drama starts with a format. The word duanju, the Chinese term that „short drama“ translates literally, refers to vertical-format series framed at 9:16 for a phone held in one hand. A single title typically runs Emma Kotos to 20 to 100 instalments, with each episode lasting between one and two minutes. Writers‘ storylines are built from a dependable set of premises: revenge, billionaire and CEO romance, identity reveals and family strife. Every one of those premises can be understood in seconds, and that matters because a whole episode has to land before the viewer’s thumb moves on. Traditional television rarely had to ask how to sell a story in slices small enough to price one at a time, but seen as a business, this format answers exactly that question. The same product now reaches English-language audiences under other terms, such as microdrama, vertical drama and mobile drama. Through every stage of the timeline that follows, that pay-per-piece logic is the common thread.
2020: The NRTA Puts the Genre on the Official Map
It’s a regulatory milestone, rather than a commercial one, that comes first. In 2020, the NRTA, China’s regulator, officially acknowledged duanju as a genre. Recognition converts a loose category of online clips into something that can be classified, counted and overseen, which is why this move matters more than it might appear. Later figures about the sector can be compared at all only because a named genre can be followed from one year to the next. For a young industry, regulatory attention can cut both ways, and none of this ensured commercial success. Short drama was shifted from the fringes of online video toward the status of an industry with its own data. A sector sizable enough to be measured against the country’s movie theaters is what that data revealed four years later.
2024: Short Drama Earns More Than the Box Office
Nothing shows how far the format had come as clearly than the domestic figures for 2024. Figures published in mid-2025 placed short drama revenue in China at 50.5 billion yuan, or about $7 billion. It marked 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’s audience was estimated at 662 million viewers. Producers released more than 30,000 titles over the same twelve months. That output is as telling about the industry’s makeup as the revenue is: a business putting out tens of thousands of titles a year is testing concepts at scale. Stiff competition is suggested too, since every one of those titles is vying for the same few minutes of a viewer’s day. Still, the push abroad had not waited for this milestone: by 2024 several Chinese-linked companies were already selling the same model abroad.
Going Overseas: The Chinese-Linked Apps Driving the Export Wave
First out of the gate was ReelShort, which launched in August 2022. Crazy Maple Studio of Sunnyvale, California, runs it, and China-based COL Group stands behind the studio. DramaBox arrived next in April 2023; it is built by Beijing Dianzhong Technology and owned by that company’s Singapore subsidiary, StoryMatrix. GoodShort launched in June 2023 under Singapore New Reading Technology, reportedly linked to Beijing New Reading Times, although that parent link rests on a thinner source. For the United States, Canada and Australia, Jiuzhou Culture rolled out ShortTV, alongside 99TV for Southeast Asia, and the evidence suggests that ShortMax is the same app under a different name, even though no rename has been officially announced. In September 2024, Kunlun Tech entered with DramaWave, which it published through its Skywork AI business, and according to Sensor Tower its FreeReels app led global downloads in the first quarter of 2026. Again and again, a Western-facing entity in California, Singapore or Hong Kong stands in front of a business whose capital or parentage leads back to China. What people who watch dramas online in English see is a vertical streaming service with a free opening and a paywall; that corporate map is largely invisible to them.
| Operating company | App | Chinese tie | Debut |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crazy Maple Studio (Sunnyvale, California) | ReelShort | Backing from 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 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 | A unit of Kunlun Tech’s Skywork AI business | September 2024 |
| Kunlun Tech | FreeReels | Kunlun Tech app | Not officially confirmed; top global downloads in Q1 2026 |
| Holywater (founded in Kyiv, 2020) | My Drama | No link; stake held by Fox Entertainment since October 2025 | Spring 2024 |
Dubbed Imports vs. Western Originals
The strategic question, once the apps existed, became what to stock them with. Jiuzhou’s answer, as reported by China Daily in January 2024, leaned 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. The same report said, a 70-episode series cost $100,000 to $150,000. Dubbing makes good sense for a company with a deep domestic library, because it extends the life of titles that have already been paid for. Although 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. Back in October 2024, TheWrap reported that about 75 percent of ReelShort’s users were women and about half were in the US; the audience, in other words, is well defined. DramaBox’s library includes titles such as Fake Dating My Rich Nemesis, and the company maintains a production team in Los Angeles. Companies without Chinese roots have also been attracted to the originals market. The most prominent is Holywater: in October 2025 its My Drama app secured an equity investment from Fox Entertainment, plus a Fox commitment to produce more than 200 vertical titles over two years.
2025 and 2026: What Market Trackers Report
The overseas business had drawn the attention of several research firms by 2025, and their figures diverge in instructive ways. Sensor Tower estimated 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 whole 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 quote slightly different totals. A wider view comes from Omdia, which puts total microdrama revenue at $11 billion in 2025, with $3 billion earned outside China, and forecasts $14 billion by the end of 2026. Half of all revenue outside China, $1.5 billion, is what Omdia also projects the US to reach in 2026. 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 projects $1.05 billion in 2026, with about $40 million in net profit. Nothing in MPA’s work is more telling for this timeline than its market-share estimates: 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.
Where the Timeline Points Next
When the milestones are lined up end to end, several patterns emerge. The first pattern is one of scale: the overseas business still looks modest beside 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 putting 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 grown tighter too: DramaBox and ReelShort each brought in about $140 million in that quarter. Monetization has settled on a consistent shape, and a weekly VIP pass costs about $19.99 in the US App Store for apps including ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave, GoodShort and My Drama as of September 2026, although prices vary by platform, country and promotion. Production is the area most likely to change next, because DramaWave, whose annualized revenue exceeded $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, remains the product whether dubbed imports, Western originals or AI output win the next phase.