Source | YuanSight

"Didn't achieve any major results, but suffered plenty of consequences. At this point, all I can do is watch some Hongguo to comfort myself."

After work, first watch Reversal in Disaster Year, then watch Entering the Song Dynasty with Weapons, and before bed, lie in bed and binge-watch A Boxed Meal in Front of the Construction Site. With a daily viewing volume of hundreds of episodes, contemporary young people are choosing to reconcile with themselves through AI short dramas.

Source: Hongguo Short Dramas

"First, establish the rules, and the path will only get wider." "It's expensive, but it doesn't cause heartburn." "You can take the shop, but you can't take the people's hearts."... A large number of clichéd lines from AI short dramas have quickly surged in popularity, becoming the latest viral internet memes.

Source: Xiaohongshu

The whole nation is rushing into the "Big Hongguo Era," but the ones getting hurt are the projector manufacturers.

LuoTu Technology's data shows that in the first half of this year, national TV sales declined by 10.1% year-on-year, while projector sales dropped by 26.0% year-on-year. Users' screen usage habits are shifting, constantly diverting demand for large-screen viewing, and the traditional home large-screen device market is suffering a severe blow from the content supply side.

Source: LuoTu Technology

Nomura Securities' recent monthly tracking report on China's internet shows that Hongguo Short Dramas, a ByteDance subsidiary, has reached 168 million daily active users, a year-on-year increase of 107%, officially surpassing the combined daily active users of the four major long-form video platforms: iQIYI, Tencent Video, Youku, and Mango TV.

Some netizens say they escaped live-action dramas and anime at the beginning of the year but couldn't escape AI short dramas by the end of the year. Others believe that AI short dramas feature more refined character modeling and more addictive storylines, with a low floor but a high ceiling. Some even binge-watched over 900 episodes of "Big Hongguo" in one night, feeling so overwhelmed that they wanted to quit their jobs and stay home to watch dramas...

Some scholars point out that media iteration and attention reconfiguration are triggering a new round of deep industry adjustments.

01 The Nation is Obsessed with AI Short Dramas

AI short dramas are comprehensively disrupting the traditional film and television industry.

Netizens joke that once someone gets hooked on AI short dramas, their life is set. In the morning, they follow Qin Shi Huang to unify the globe; at noon, they watch survival challenges in a freezing apocalypse; at night, they start time-traveling to various eras for a new round of inspirational comebacks. Some netizens say that during this National Day holiday, while others went out to travel and enjoy themselves for seven days, they stayed home and watched over 8,000 episodes of AI short dramas, still unable to pull themselves away.

Source: Xiaohongshu

Similar situations are not isolated cases.

Nomura Securities' research report shows that domestic users now spend a combined total of over four hours per day on Hongguo Short Dramas and Douyin, two major ByteDance "time-killing" apps. Hongguo Short Dramas tops the list with an average daily usage time of 125 minutes. Some media outlets have to speak bluntly (bluntly stated) that China's internet has officially entered the "ByteDance Time."

Source: Apple App Store

This AI drama craze, driven by leading AI short drama platforms and channels, is further enhancing market penetration and user engagement on mobile devices.

QuestMobile's recent data shows that as of June 2026, the total monthly active users across the entire internet reached 1.282 billion, a year-on-year increase of 1.2%. Meanwhile, user engagement continues to grow, with the average monthly usage time and frequency per user reaching 189.3 hours and 2,691 times, respectively, up 7.4% and 3.1% year-on-year.

Additionally, users aged 45 and above account for 39.5% of the total, while users from third- and fourth-tier cities make up 41.5%, representing year-on-year increases of 2.4% and 0.7%, respectively.

Specifically, in the short drama video app industry, the latest monthly active user base has surpassed 400 million, a year-on-year increase of 71.5%. Rich content offerings and AI technology have propelled it to become a new favorite for nationwide entertainment.

The report points out that with the steady growth of mobile video app users, mobile video has become the primary track (track) for "user attention," accounting for over 40% of user time, with short videos dominating absolutely.

Compared to traditional long-form film and television (film and television) dramas, AI short dramas' disruptive power mainly comes from two advantages: production capacity and algorithms.

Official data shows that in the first eight months of this year, 430,000 micro-short dramas were released domestically, 13 times more than last year, with AI dramas accounting for over 90% of the total. Among them, Douyin (including associated ecosystems like Hongguo) added 221,900 new AI dramas and comic dramas in the first half of the year, equivalent to a new drama being born every 20 seconds at peak times.

Under platform algorithm-driven recommendation mechanisms, AI dramas of various genres are continuously distributed to users across different age groups.

02 The Projector Growth Story Falls Flat

While Hongguo achieves major success, projectors, deeply tied to long-form video and immersive large-screen viewing, are facing a growth crisis.

LuoTu Technology's recently released "China Smart Projector Retail Market Monthly Tracking" report shows that in the first half of 2026, total smart projector sales (excluding laser TVs) across all channels in China reached 2.056 million units, a year-on-year decline of 26.0%. Sales revenue reached 3.34 billion yuan, a year-on-year drop of 27.0%. In the second quarter of 2026, sales fell below 1 million units, the first time since 2022 that a single-quarter figure dropped below the million-unit mark.

Analysis indicates that multiple factors, including declining market dividends, pressure on residents' consumption willingness, and users' shifting screen usage habits diverting demand away from large-screen viewing, are collectively driving the projector market's decline beyond expectations.

In fact, since the second quarter of 2024, the domestic projector market has experienced year-on-year sales declines for nine consecutive quarters.

From a product category perspective, consumer-grade projectors have always faced the challenge of a solidify (solidified) category label, primarily targeting various film and music enthusiasts, renters, and small-household families. These users perceive projectors as large-screen alternatives to TVs rather than essential home appliances.

As audiences increasingly embrace the new viewing experience of frequently binge-watching AI short dramas on their phones, large-screen devices like TVs and projectors have become supplementary to mobile phones. On social media platforms like Xiaohongshu, many users who previously purchased projectors say their devices have been collecting dust due to harsh viewing light conditions, expensive long-form video memberships requiring separate payments, and other reasons.

At the same time, the wild growth of the consumer-grade projector market in recent years has been eroding consumer trust.

Previously, market regulatory agencies in multiple regions found that most projectors on sale suffered from issues like confusing labeling, inflated brightness claims, and substandard performance. Last year, the Tianjin Consumers Association released a comparative test of 20 projector models, revealing that 17 of them had lower brightness than claimed, accounting for 85% of the total tested. Some products' actual brightness was even less than 50% of the advertised value. An investigation by Jiangsu News' "Wang Luo Tian Xia" found that four out of five randomly sampled products had inflated brightness claims.

The 2021 "home economy" boom brought significant market dividends to consumer-grade projectors. During the market scramble, many manufacturers used "lab data" and special testing environments to beautify their numbers, leading to frequent discrepancies between product claims and actual user experiences. This resulted in high idle rates and extremely low repurchase rates for consumer-grade projectors.

With AI short dramas flourishing and users' viewing time and habits shifting toward mobile phones, the projector market has been forced into a new round of deep adjustments.

03 Transformation and Integration

With the projector business becoming increasingly challenging, leading manufacturers are seeking business adjustments and transformations.

Earlier this year, XGIMI established a new brand, MemoMind, to enter the AI smart hardware market. On October 15, XGIMI announced the pre-sale of its first AI display glasses, the MemoMind One, priced at 2,699 yuan.

Source: Internet

The product features AI smart memory, information display, navigation prompts, real-time translation, and other functions. It adopts a camera-free design and supports binocular display.

Leveraging its accumulated expertise in optics, light engines, algorithms, and supply chain capabilities from consumer-grade projection products, XGIMI is also exploring monetization in scenarios like commercial projection and in-car optics.

Commercial projection primarily targets corporate meeting rooms, school classrooms, cultural and tourism exhibitions, and large-scale outdoor performances. Prices are typically several to dozens of times higher than home products, but it faces direct competition from traditional brands like BenQ and Epson.

Another highly anticipated application scenario is in-car optical solutions, including smart cockpit projections, smart headlights, and heads-up displays (HUDs).

Prior to this, XGIMI collaborated with the 2025 AITO M9 model, achieving the first successful implementation of its in-car projection fixed point (designated) project with the automotive division. This marked XGIMI's first in-depth cooperation with Harmony Intelligent Mobility. According to XGIMI, the company's in-car projection products have already begun mass production and delivery, featuring in multiple models under Huawei's Harmony Intelligent Mobility brand.

Source: XGIMI

As the domestic leader in consumer-grade projectors, XGIMI went public on the STAR Market in March 2021. Benefiting from early market dividends, XGIMI delivered strong 2022 results, with total revenue of 4.22 billion yuan and net profit of 501 million yuan. However, since then, it has been grappling with growth pains due to market saturation in the domestic home projector segment, with performance under long-term pressure.

Source: Tianyancha

Some institutions point out that no trend reversal signals have been seen in the projector market for the second half of this year, with the market expected to remain weak in the third and fourth quarters.

From an industry fundamental perspective, market growth pressures are also accelerating industrial capital consolidation.

This year has seen a concentration of M&A events, including TCL Huaxing's acquisition of Chuangke Optoelectronics, Hisense's purchase of Kaipulin Optoelectronics, and United Optics' successful bid for Goaligo's equity. These reflect the urgency of leading enterprises to build competitive barriers through industrial integration during this industry adjustment period.

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