DataEye: overseas downloads up 79% in H1, in-app revenue up 13%
The vendor's half-year figures put install growth six times ahead of in-app purchase revenue growth, and describe a sector that has moved from land-grab expansion to competition for existing users.
What this basis means: Third-party research vendor estimate. The vendor is named wherever the source identifies it.
DataEye's first-half 2026 figures put overseas downloads of short-drama apps up 79% year on year, while overseas in-app purchase revenue rose 13% over the same period. Both numbers come from the same vendor, the same dataset and the same period, a six-fold gap between growth in volume and growth in value. DataEye reads the sector as having left land-grab expansion for what it calls stock competition (存量竞争).
The direction matches Naavik's Volume-vs-Value Paradox of 14 June, from a different vendor using a different method. Against that reading: the 13% applies to a half-year base of $1.27bn, February was the trough, and DataEye records recovery from May.
The same release raised the full-year 2026 overseas forecast from $5bn to more than $6bn, put Chinese-origin apps at 93% of revenue, gave monthly active users as 258m at mid-year and projected 389m by year-end, and counted 38,722 new titles released in June alone.
The release is not precisely dated. It circulated on or before 3 August through 36Kr, an authorised republication of DataEye's original WeChat post.
Sources
- H1 2026 overseas short-drama data DataEye
- Authorised republication of the DataEye H1 2026 release 36Kr
- Volume-vs-Value Paradox, 14 June 2026 Naavik