It Wasn't Just a Fad! Short Drama Apps Rallied in 2024
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A new kind of app emerged last year and became very popular almost overnight, and while I expected its popularity to drop, it didn't! Competitors joined very quickly, and a little over a year in, the leader of the pack has seen monthly net revenue balloon to more than $24M, according to Appfigures eatimates. Net means after store fees.
The kind of app, in case you haven't guessed yet, is short drama streaming - which evolved into short TV - and the leader is ReelShort, which I first wrote about back in November of last year.
That was about a year after it was officially released, and at that time ReelShort had brought in a total of $22M since its release. Now it makes that in a month!
ReelShort's success attracted quite a few competitors. By April of this year, there were enough competitors to fill up a whole leaderboard, which ReelShort led.
I must admit, even in April, I expected this trend to disappear. Why? Because Quibi, the OG short TV app that launched to much fanfare back in 2020 failed almost instantly. But not this group.
Fast forward to right now - ReelShort is ranked 26th in the US App Store's Top Grossing chart. The next competitor, Dramabox, ranks 60th, while another competitor, GooDshort, ranks 77th.
That means there's money, a lot of money, in short drama apps.
How much money?
I used Explorer to find short drama apps and found 81 on the App Store and 61 on Google Play. Together, those apps earned $80M of net revenue in the last month, according to our estimates. That's after store fees.
ReelShort was the leader followed by ShortMax and Good Short. We estimate that 78 of the 142 total apps earned at least $10K of net revenue. 42 earned more than 100K of net revenue, and 13 earned at least a million. In a single month.
And here's what's even more interesting, and likely the reason why they are successful and that we keep seeing new competitors - we estimate that the revenue per download, on average, is $19. That means that for every download these apps get they keep $19. That's wildly higher than the industry average and means they can spend on user acquisition.
Let's see if this trends continues into next year.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
