Viu, a streaming player in Asia, is adding vertical fiction to its platform

Viu is a streaming platform owned by the Hong Kong-based PCCW Group. The service is available in several markets across Asia, the Middle East, and South Africa, with 15.5 million paid subscribers at the end of December 2024. Since then, the company has reached 16.8 million paid subscribers, and subscription revenue has grown by 13% year-over-year.

On January 8, 2026, Viu announced Viu Shorts, a new section of vertical videos integrated directly into the Viu mobile app. It's not a separate app, but a new section within the existing platform.

Viu describes Duanju's offering as featuring episodes ranging from 1 to 3 minutes, a multilingual selection (including Chinese, Korean, Thai, and Indonesian), and several genres (romance, thriller, fantasy, and variety). Viu also lists launch titles and distribution and production partners, including Rising Joy, KT Studiogenie, China Huace, 1001 Frames, and Youhug Media.

What makes this launch significant is the scale of the environment: Viu Shorts is being launched by an already established platform, with subscribers, active markets, and a media/telecom group behind it. This is not an isolated test.

Viu claims to be expanding its content offering by adding very short formats alongside its longer series and films, in order to better cater to different viewing habits within the same app. Viu also says it wants to better engage its audience based on viewing preferences, with faster mobile consumption, and to leverage a freemium model that can broaden access while creating new advertising opportunities.

If we read this with the group's figures, the objective is also economic: to increase the platform's reach, enrich the advertising inventory, and accelerate monetization with more "cost-efficient" content (less expensive to supply than some long premium offers).

The initial results were “encouraging,” with Viu Shorts viewing penetration exceeding 11% in the first three weeks following its launch. This suggests that the goal is not simply to gain a foothold, but rather to rapidly create a new use case within an already existing user base.

Sources

• PCCW – January 8, 2026

• PCCW Media – February 25, 2026

• PCCW – February 10, 2026

• CANAL+ Group – June 21, 2023