A Format Shaped for One Hand: Duanju Where It Began
It’s a format, not a corporation, that starts the history of Chinese short drama. “Short drama” is the literal translation of the Chinese term duanju, a term for vertical shows framed at 9:16 for a phone held in one hand. An episode runs between one and two minutes, while a single title typically runs to 20 to 100 instalments. Writers’ storylines are built from a reliable set of premises: revenge, billionaire and CEO romance, hidden-identity reveals and family conflict. Each one of those premises can be grasped in seconds, and that matters because a whole https://www.reelshorts.org/where-to-watch/runway-to-my-heart/ episode has to land before the viewer’s thumb swipes away. Traditional television rarely had to ask how to sell a story in pieces small enough to price one at a time, yet seen as a business, the format settles exactly that question. The very same product now reaches English-speaking audiences under other labels, such as microdrama, vertical drama and mobile drama. Every stage of the timeline ahead is connected by this pay-per-piece logic.
2020: The NRTA Puts the Genre on the Official Map
The first milestone is regulatory, not a commercial one. In 2020, duanju was formally acknowledged as a genre by the Chinese regulator, the NRTA. This move is more important than it might appear: recognition converts a loose category of online clips into something that can be classified, counted and supervised. Later figures about the sector can be compared at all only because a named genre can be tracked from one year to the next. None of this promised commercial success, and a regulator’s attention can cut both ways for a new industry. It did, however, shift short drama from the fringes of online video toward the status of an industry with its own data. Four years on, the data showed a sector large enough to be compared against the country’s cinemas.
2024: The Year Short Drama Outearned the Box Office
Nothing captures how far the format had come more clearly than the domestic figures for 2024. Short drama revenue in China climbed to 50.5 billion yuan, or about $7 billion, according to data published in mid-2025. That year marked the first time the sector earned more than China’s box office: a symbolic crossover for an industry made of one- and two-minute episodes. In 2024, producers released more than 30,000 titles. Estimates placed the audience over the same twelve months at 662 million viewers. That output says as much about the industry’s shape as the revenue does, because a business releasing tens of thousands of titles a year is trialing premises at scale. Every one of those titles is vying for the same few minutes of a viewer’s day, which also signals fierce competition. By 2024, however, several Chinese-linked companies were already offering the same model abroad, because the push abroad had not waited for this milestone.
Heading Overseas: The Chinese-Linked Apps Powering the Export Wave
ReelShort came first out of the gate, debuting 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, built by Beijing Dianzhong Technology and owned by the developer’s Singapore subsidiary, StoryMatrix, came next in April 2023. Singapore New Reading Technology brought out GoodShort in June 2023; the company is reportedly linked to Beijing New Reading Times, although that parent link rests on a weaker source. Jiuzhou Culture rolled out ShortTV for the United States, Canada and Australia, together with 99TV for Southeast Asia. The evidence suggests ShortMax is the same app under a different name, although no rename has been officially announced. In September 2024, Kunlun Tech came in with DramaWave, released through its Skywork AI business, and according to Sensor Tower the company’s FreeReels app topped global downloads in the first quarter of 2026. A business whose capital or parentage traces back to China, fronted by a Western-facing entity in California, Singapore or Hong Kong: that is the recurring pattern. That corporate map is mostly invisible to people who watch dramas online in English, who see a vertical streaming service with a free opening and a paywall.
| Operating company | Service | Chinese tie | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crazy Maple Studio (Sunnyvale, California) | ReelShort | Backing from China-based COL Group | August 2022 |
| StoryMatrix Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) | DramaBox | A 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 | A unit of Kunlun Tech’s Skywork AI business | September 2024 |
| Kunlun Tech | FreeReels | App owned by Kunlun Tech | Not officially confirmed; highest global downloads in Q1 2026 |
| Holywater (founded in Kyiv, 2020) | My Drama | None at all; Fox Entertainment has held a stake since October 2025 | Spring 2024 |
Dubbed Imports vs. Western Originals
The strategic question, after the apps existed, became what to stock them with. In January 2024, China Daily reported that Jiuzhou’s answer drew heavily on its domestic library. 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. In the same report, the cost of a 70-episode series was placed 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 rich domestic library. 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 found that about 75 percent of ReelShort’s users were women and about half were in the US; the audience, in other words, is specific. DramaBox operates a production team in Los Angeles, and its catalogue includes titles such as Fake Dating My Rich Nemesis. Chinese roots are not universal: the originals market has also attracted firms without them, most notably 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 Show
By 2025 the overseas business was being tracked by several research firms, and their figures differ in instructive ways. Sensor Tower estimated that, worldwide in-app revenue for short-drama apps reached about $700 million in the first quarter of 2025, with the United States contributing 49 percent, or roughly $350 million. Different reports of the same dataset cite slightly different totals, but for the full year Sensor Tower’s data places in-app revenue at about $2.8 billion to $3 billion, up roughly 115 percent. Omdia takes a wider view: it estimates total microdrama revenue at $11 billion in 2025, with $3 billion of it earned outside China, and predicts $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, 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. MPA puts ReelShort’s revenue at $785 million in 2025; for 2026 it expects $1.05 billion, with about $40 million in net profit. Its market-share estimates are the most revealing for this timeline: 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 Ahead
Lay the milestones end to end and several patterns stand out. First, the overseas business still looks modest compared with its origin: Omdia’s figures imply that most microdrama revenue in 2025 was earned inside China. The second pattern is that growth is likely cooling, 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. The contest at the top has grown closer as well, with DramaBox and ReelShort each earning about $140 million in that quarter. Monetization has settled into a recognizable shape: for apps including ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave, GoodShort and My Drama, a weekly VIP pass costs about $19.99 in the US App Store as of September 2026, though prices vary by country, platform and promotion. DramaWave, whose annualized revenue topped $700 million by the second quarter of 2026, reportedly generates more than 80 percent of its new releases with AI, so production is the area most likely to change next. The product remains the one duanju producers built at home, a story sold a minute at a time, whether dubbed imports, Western originals or AI output claim the next phase.