Omdia's US minutes are measured, its billion-dollar total is not

The figure or the record

On 23 February 2026, at MIP London, the research firm Omdia published a release titled 'Microdramas overtake streamers on mobile engagement'. Omdia estimates global microdrama revenue reached $11 billion in 2025 and will grow to $14 billion by the end of 2026, of which $3 billion is expected outside China. Within that international slice, Omdia forecasts the United States will be the largest market, reaching $1.5 billion in 2026 and accounting for half of all ex-China revenue. The same release states a different kind of number: daily minutes watched. Citing Q4 2025 mobile usage data it attributes to Sensor Tower, Omdia reports that US users of the app ReelShort spent 35.7 minutes a day on it, more than Netflix (24.8 minutes), Amazon Prime Video (26.9 minutes) or Disney+ (23.0 minutes). The same figures put Netflix's US mobile monthly active users at roughly 12 million against about 1.1 million for ReelShort.

What the documents establish

The release does not treat every number the same way. The $1.5 billion 2026 US figure and the $14 billion global figure are Omdia's own modelled estimates; the note names no per-company breakdown and no method beyond 'Omdia analysis'. The minutes figures rest on a different foundation. Sensor Tower's own report, published in June 2026, states its download and usage figures come from estimated app-store and device data, not survey recall or company disclosure. Omdia's release borrows that measured layer for its minutes claims without extending the same caveat to its revenue forecast, running a modelled dollar total and a measured usage panel side by side under one headline.

Scope and caveats

The minutes comparison covers named apps in named countries at one point in time and says nothing about total audience size: by Omdia's own count, Netflix still reaches roughly ten times more US mobile users each month than ReelShort. Intensity of use per user is not reach, and a forecast is not an audited result. The $1.5 billion figure also cannot be checked against any single company's own disclosure, since the release gives no line-item behind it, and 'outside China' is a geography of consumption that Omdia does not further define by currency conversion method or by whether the figure is gross billings or net revenue.

What to watch

This is editorial: the more informative test of the US market is not whether the 2026 forecast lands near $1.5 billion, but whether ReelShort's or a rival's monthly active user count starts closing the gap with the streaming apps it currently beats only on minutes per user.

• Does Omdia or another analyst publish the method behind the $1.5 billion US forecast?
• Is ReelShort's US monthly active user count reported anywhere outside this one comparison?
• Do later usage reports keep showing the same app-to-app minutes gap through the rest of 2026?

Read carefully, the release describes a real behavioural shift among a still-small US audience, not yet a scale shift. Both things can be true at once, and the ledger records them as what they are: a measured minutes gap and a modelled dollar forecast, not one confirmed number.