A One-Handed Format: Duanju on Home Soil
Instead of a firm, the history of Chinese short drama begins with a screen format. Taken literally, the Chinese term duanju means “short drama”, and it covers vertical shows framed https://mydrama.org/ at 9:16 for a phone held in a single hand. The episodes run between one and two minutes, and a single title typically runs to 20 to 100 chapters. A dependable set of premises underpins the stories: billionaire and CEO romance, revenge plots, family conflict and hidden-identity reveals. A whole episode has to land before the viewer’s thumb swipes away, so it helps a great deal that every one of those premises can be grasped in seconds. How do you sell a story in slices small enough to price one at a time? Traditional television seldom had to ask that question, but considered as a business, the format solves it. English-language audiences now run into the same product under other tags, including microdrama, vertical drama and mobile drama. Every stage of the timeline ahead is linked by this pay-per-piece logic.
2020: The NRTA Puts the Genre on the Map
It is a regulatory milestone, rather than a commercial one, that comes first. In 2020, duanju was officially recognized as a genre by China’s regulator, the NRTA. Recognition transforms a shapeless category of online clips into something that can be classified, counted and overseen, which is why the step matters more than it might seem. A named genre can be followed from one year to the next, which is what enables later statistics about the sector to be compared at all. For a fledgling industry, a regulator’s attention can cut both ways, and none of this ensured commercial success. Recognition did, however, move short drama from the fringes of online video toward the status of an industry with its own data. A sector big enough to be measured against the country’s movie theaters is what that data showed four years later.
2024: The Year Short Drama Overtook the Box Office
The domestic figures for 2024 are the most obvious measure of how far the format had come. According to data made public in mid-2025, short drama revenue in China hit 50.5 billion yuan, or about $7 billion. For an industry founded on one- and two-minute episodes, it was a telling crossover: the first year the sector earned more than China’s box office. In 2024, producers put out more than 30,000 titles. Over the same twelve months, the viewership was estimated at 662 million viewers. The volume is as revealing about the industry’s structure as the revenue figure is: a business releasing tens of thousands of titles a year is testing premises at scale. It also points to intense competition: every one of those titles is competing 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 was 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, developed by Beijing Dianzhong Technology and owned by the developer’s Singapore subsidiary, StoryMatrix, followed in April 2023. Singapore New Reading Technology launched GoodShort in June 2023; the company is reportedly tied to Beijing New Reading Times, though that parent link rests on a less solid source. In addition to 99TV for Southeast Asia, Jiuzhou Culture rolled out ShortTV for the United States, Canada and Australia; no rename has been officially announced, but the evidence suggests ShortMax is the same app under another name. Kunlun Tech arrived in September 2024 with DramaWave, released through its Skywork AI business; going by Sensor Tower’s data, its 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. 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.
| Company behind it | App name | Link to China | 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 part of Beijing New Reading Times | June 2023 |
| SHORTTV LIMITED (Hong Kong) | ShortTV / ShortMax | Jiuzhou Culture; both names appear to belong to one app | September 2023 |
| SKYWORK AI PTE LTD | DramaWave | A unit of Kunlun Tech’s Skywork AI business | September 2024 |
| Kunlun Tech | FreeReels | An app from Kunlun Tech | Unconfirmed; 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 or Western Originals
The strategic question, once the apps existed, was what to stock them with. In January 2024, China Daily reported that Jiuzhou’s answer leaned heavily on its domestic catalogue. The company had made more than 600 mini-dramas for overseas markets: about 80 percent were dubbed Chinese adaptations and 20 percent were original overseas productions. Per the same report, a 70-episode series cost $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. While Western originals are more expensive, with TheWrap citing $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; that audience, in other words, is specific. 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 pulled into the originals market. The most visible is Holywater: in October 2025 its My Drama app received 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
The overseas business was drawing the attention of several research firms by 2025, and their estimates diverge in revealing ways. The United States accounted for 49 percent, or roughly $350 million, of global in-app revenue for short-drama apps in the first quarter of 2025, which Sensor Tower pegged at about $700 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 cite slightly different totals. Omdia takes a wider view: it puts total microdrama revenue at $11 billion in 2025, with $3 billion of it earned outside China, and projects $14 billion by the end of 2026. For 2026, Omdia also projects the US to reach $1.5 billion, half of all revenue outside China. Estimates from Media Partners Asia, reported in August 2026, put revenue outside China at $2.7 billion for 2025, $3.6 billion for 2026 and $9.5 billion by 2031. MPA estimates ReelShort’s revenue at $785 million in 2025 and forecasts $1.05 billion in 2026, with about $40 million in net profit. For this timeline, MPA’s market-share estimates are the most instructive: 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
Laid end to end, the milestones show a few patterns. First, the overseas business still looks limited next to its origin: Omdia’s figures imply that most microdrama revenue in 2025 was earned inside China. After triple-digit growth across 2025, Sensor Tower puts the first quarter of 2026 at about $750 million, up 20 percent year over year, which points to the second pattern, a likely slowing of growth. With DramaBox and ReelShort each bringing in about $140 million in that quarter, competition at the top has tightened as well. The way these apps make money has settled into a recognizable shape: across apps such as ReelShort, ShortMax, DramaWave, GoodShort and My Drama, a weekly VIP pass costs about $19.99 in the US App Store as of September 2026, although prices vary by country, platform and promotion. Production is the part of the business most likely to change next: DramaWave, whose annualized revenue topped $700 million by the second quarter of 2026, reportedly produces more than 80 percent of its new releases with AI. Whether dubbed imports, Western originals or AI output win the next phase, the product is still the one duanju producers built at home: a story sold a minute at a time.