Short Drama Apps Are Taking Traditional Streamers' Growth
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Japan Gets Serious. Check out the full article for more insights.
Streaming apps have gained popularity rapidly in the last few years, aided by covid lockdown and an initial abundance of exclusive content. Demand has since stabilized as popular names refined their offerings and found the content that works best for them.
It looked like things were stable, but for over a year now, a new type of competitor has been growing and slowly taking away growth.
This new type of competitor is none other than short drama apps, and the numbers show just how dramatic this shift is.
Since I started watching the Short Drama app market more than a year ago, everything has gone up - downloads are up, revenue is way up, and those two result in the number of competitors also going up. Some of those apps have even become common fixtures in the top apps lists across both stores.
I wanted to see if this growth is coming at the expense of traditional so I compared downloads of the leading streaming apps with downloads of the leading short drama apps going all the way back to the beginning of 2023, when short drama apps weren't popular.
This analysis is focused on the US because some streaming apps are only available in the US and it looks like short drama apps are focusing their growth here as well.
The data answered my question very quickly - Yes, short dramas are growing at the expense of traditional streaming apps.
According to our App intelligence, downloads of traditional streaming apps, including Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, Max, Paramount+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video, have collectively dropped 35% year over year in the US. Downloads of popular short drama apps, including DramaBox, ShortMax, GoodShort, NetShort, ReelShort, have grown 221% in the same period.
And we're not talking small numbers here. Appfigures data shows those traditional streamers got 7.4M new downloads in January while the short drama set got 5.6M - lower, but very close.
But while the downloads are getting scary close, revenue is still very different. Our estimates show consumers spent $423M on traditional streaming apps in the US but only $90M on short drama apps, and that doesn't include Netflix which isn't monetizing directly through its app.
Attention is mutually exclusive in this case so I expect that to change as more users get hooked on short drama apps and abandon traditional streaming apps. Unless traditional streamers find a way to hang on to viewers with content, just like how all of this started back in early 2020.
Content is still king.
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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.
