When Duanju's apps challenge TikTok

For a long time, duanju seemed like an anomaly. A vertical stream of very short fictional stories, saturated with close-ups, immediate plot twists, and promises of sequels at the click of a button. A grammar of urgency, designed for the phone, that might have amused streaming professionals. Except that, since the end of 2023, the “anomaly” has started to appear where it hurts: in the download charts, and then in the revenue.

Figures that are changing scale

The shift is first and foremost quantifiable. Appfigures estimates that 66 short-drama apps generated $146 million in consumer spending in the first quarter of 2024, compared to $1.8 million in the same period a year earlier. This acceleration isn't simply a passing fad, because it's accompanied by a change in status: these apps are no longer simply "copying" TikTok; they're capturing entertainment budgets and purchase intent that video platforms hadn't necessarily converted.

ReelShort, often presented as the standard-bearer of this wave in the US market, offered the clearest illustration of it. On November 11, 2023, the app briefly overtook TikTok to become the most popular entertainment app on the US App Store, a rare occurrence in a market where TikTok is usually untouchable in terms of mainstream downloads. References to this event subsequently circulated in several industry analyses, demonstrating that it resonated with observers as a significant market moment.

A model that eats up screen time

The competition isn't head-to-head on usage, but rather on the scarcest resource: time. Where TikTok wins through variety and endless content, duanju apps win through continuity. Everything is designed to transform curiosity into a series. And above all, acquisition is industrialized. Adjust describes strategies where the share of paid downloads for market leaders (ReelShort, DramaBox, GoodShort) can reach very high levels, a sign of growth driven by media buying and optimized like a traditional mobile product, not like a "social" platform that relies on organic traffic.

This is where the comparison with major streamers becomes relevant. Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video compete on catalog size and content budget, but they sell a longer, often more established, ritual. Duanju apps, on the other hand, sell impulse and seamless streaming. They don't necessarily replace a full evening of binge-watching; they replace fragments of the day—the very fragments TikTok has captured. When these fragments become monetizable on a large scale, duanju ceases to be a novelty and becomes a category competitor.

The challenge for 2026 is therefore not whether these apps will “hold up” against TikTok or streamers, but how far they can extend their reach: more genres, more locations, and economic models capable of financing more ambitious production without losing the speed that is their strength.

On this point, cases like DramaBox or Stardust TV count as much as ReelShort: the story is no longer that of a single application, but of a format that has become an industry.

Sources:

• The Economist – November 23, 2023

• 36Kr Global – March 3, 2025

• Global Times – November 26, 2023

• Appfigures – 2024

• Adjust – June 4, 2024