Annual Nominet Report – 2010:

Nominet, the official registry operator of the .UK country-code Top-Level Domain, recently released its Domain Name Industry Report for 2010.  Many important bits of information and some excellent findings are in this report that HEXONET would like to share:

1) .UK is growing at a remarkable 11.5% year-over-year and .UK domain registrations have hit a record high with 8,722,474  registrations (as of August 2010) . Nominet estimates that they will reach 9 million domains by the end of 2010.

2) .UK is now the second largest ccTLD in the world just behind Germany’s .DE.  In fact, .UK has surpassed China’s .CN ccTLD, which was in the number 2 position until recent turmoil.

3) Despite the worldwide economic downturn in 2010, March of this year happened to still be the busiest month for new .UK registrations in recent years, surpassing 200,000 new registrations in a single month!

4) Renewal rates are approximately 69%

5) 80% of British consumers prefer to use a .UK search result over .COM

6) Nominet has released new tools for registrars to quickly identify and permanently remove domain names suspected of criminal activity from the domain name system.

7) 65% of UK print and television advertising now includes domain names

.UK News Not in the Annual Nominet Report:

1) The secondary market for .UK has been strong for a long time.  SEDO, a leader in secondary domain name markets, in their Q3 2010 Domain Market Study (http://goo.gl/2ewG6), stated that .UK has increased its total share to 14% of all ccTLD aftermarket sales and is second only to .DE.

2) In March 2010, Nominet commenced its DNSSEC implementation; when completed HEXONET will be one of the first registrars to support it. 

3) In December 2010, Nominet will release a number of previously held one and two-character .co.uk domains. Click here for more details.

We at HEXONET would like to congratulate Nominet on the work they have done to consistently grow the UK ccTLD. And we encourage all of our resellers to add .UK domains to your service offerings.  The ccTLD is one of the strongest and most popular in the world and continues to expand its influence and reach.

.UK at a Glance:

Available Domains: .co.uk, .org.uk, ,me.uk

Pricing: View Pricing   http://www.hexonet.net/price-list.php?location=world#prdomains

Requirements: Anyone can register a .co.uk domain

Registration Period: 2 years

IDN Capable: No

As a fluent speaker of Japanese and a former resident of Japan, I have always tried to keep my finger on the pulse the country including technology and Internet trends.   I thought I would take this opportunity to shed some light on the domain market in Japan and in particular the Japanese country-code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) .JP.

Considering Japan is the third largest economy in the world with over 127 million inhabitants and an Internet penetration rate of 78%, one would think that the domain market in Japan would be large and highly developed.  The strange thing is that it is not.  Currently there are only 1,190,404 registered .JP domains. To put this number into perspective, the UK with only 61 million people has nearly 9 million registered .UK domains.  More starkly, Canada with just 33 million people has almost 1.5 million registered .CA domains.  To get some answers as to why .JP is so under utilized, I turned to an active domainer in the Japanese market and here are his conclusions:

1) The co.JP domain for many years was the only extension available for registration. Tight regulations like having to show proof of business registration to even qualify to purchase the domain of one’s own company name (to ensure that only Sony Corporation can buy sony.co.jp) made it difficult and discouraging for many small businesses.

2) According to JPRS, the official registry operator of .JP, there is a limit of one co.JP domain per legal entity!  Therefore, companies and businesses, who typically are the main consumers of domain names in other countries, in Japan, they were only limited to ONE main corporate domain name.

3) With the restrictive rules and no second level registrations allowed, many companies and individuals started registering .COM, .NET and other extensions in full force.  Even now, with the new open registration policies (today, anyone can register a .JP second level domain as long as they have a permanent postal address in Japan – HEXONET offers local presence registration services if one doesn’t have a local Japanese address), registrants haven’t yet switched back and it may take some time for .JP to retake the preferred domain status.

4) Prices for .JP domains are still relatively expensive compared to more popular gTLDs.

5) Unlike other major domain markets like North America and Europe, there seems to be less emphasis on having a memorable URL. This is because the Japanese like to use search engines versus directly typing in the full URL.  Companies typically provide the search keywords in their advertising with their URLs. As an in the example below, So-Net, a Japanese ISP owned by SONY, features a search box with the keyphrase ‘So-Net hikari’ in their marketing. This trend is prevalent in TV ads, print, and mixed media.

Photo courtesy of www.shibuya246.com

Other Trends:

• IDNs are slowing gaining popularity in Japan. In fact, this year NameDrive has partnered WIXI (ICANN-accredited and .JP accredited domain registrar) to launch the first domain parking platform dedicated to the Japanese market. IDNs are the focus of this new platform.
• In 2011, we will see the release of the .日本 ccTLD. (meaning .Japan or ‘Nihon’ in Japanese)
• JPRS plans on implementing DNSSEC in .JP domain name services in January 2011.
• Last month, McAfee released a report ranking .JP as the safest domain extension

.JP at a Glance:

Available Domains:  .JP

Pricing: View Pricing

Requirements: Anyone can register a .JP domain as long as you have a permanent postal address in Japan

Registration Period: 1-10 yrs.

IDN Capable: Yes

AFNIC, the official registry operator of France’s .FR country-code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD), has completed their public consultation on opening the .FR domain to the rest of the European Union. Though the liberalization of .FR is not yet determined, if approved, the roll out will be for late 2011. Given this potentially great opportunity for .FR domains, HEXONET would like to take this opportunity to provide you with a quick overview of this ccTLD.

Overview:

• Current number of registered .FR domains stands at 1.8 Million
• Between 2008 and 2009, the .FR ccTLD grew at 25% (compared to other ccTLDs which averaged only 8%)
• According to AFNIC, since registrations opened to individuals in France in June 2006, and thanks to recent improvements in system automation and a reduction in registrars’ prices, .FR has become a strong TLD choice among the French. In fact, personal (non-corporate) registrants now make up a significant part of the overall growth of the .FR registry. Personal registrations now account for 50% of new .FR registrations, which was only 40% a year previously.
• Registration of .FR now accounts for:
  • 33% of all combined domain names registrations in France;
  • 80% of all new domain names registrations in France;
  • and the renewal rate for .FR names is very high at around 80%.
• On September 14th, AFNIC kicked off deployment of DNSSEC in France by signing the .FR Top Level Domain.
• The secondary market in France is underdeveloped compared to neighboring countries. However, in January 2010 the domain – Credit.FR – sold for €587,500 euros (approx. $785,000 USD), which is a good sign the after market for .FR is growing.

We at HEXONET believes the .FR ccTLD has tremendous growth potential, especially if the public consultation leads to a more open registration policy.  In the meantime, for those customers who reside outside of France and who are interested in registering .FR ccTLDs, HEXONET offers a trustee service for fast and easy registration …  more details.