- Registrar Atlas compares the Domain Industry in 8 different markets
- Study available free of charge at https://numbers.eco.de
The Association of the German Internet Industry, eco, is releasing its Registrar Atlas 2013 just in time for the start of the new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). In the third edition of the largest international study of the Domain Industry, eco has investigated the chances of success the domain providers of the new gTLDs like .web, .blog or .mail will have. Lawyer Thomas Rickert, Director of the Competence Group Names and Numbers in the eco Association, is convinced: “Good domains are already like an address on Park Avenue. With the introduction of the new gTLDs, a lot of new virtual properties in top locations will be created.”
For the Registrar Atlas, companies providing domain names in 8 countries were surveyed – with the support of local partners. Alongside the German-speaking countries (the D-A-CH region) and the Netherlands, for the first time France, Great Britain, Bulgaria and Russia were included. “The Registrar Atlas is growing from year to year, and shows how the companies of the domain industry are distributed, what the similarities and differences of the markets are, and what the trends are,” said Rickert. According to the study, the new geographical expansions like .moscow and .nyc and generic endings like .radio or .sport can expect especially high popularity. Well over a third (37%) of German domain providers rate the new gTLDs with very high chances of success. Despite this, over half of the respondents surveyed (58%) were in agreement that the demand would be dependent on specific address expansions.
Global Players take new TLDs to the world
Less optimistic is it for providers offering firm-specific extensions like .apple or .audi, which, according to the Registrar Atlas, is a result of company TLDs being – as a rule – reserved for the respective firm, and therefore promising no sales for the provider. Rickert explains: “We will experience hundreds of new domains which companies can use to get closer to their customers. Imagine a billboard which gives the address new-911.porsche, or send-it-by.ups . Until now, most Internet users would not have seen these as functional addresses. That will soon change and we can expect a lot of innovation in this area.”
The domain providers are planning relatively few marketing measures to boost consumer demand in the new TLDs: In Germany only a quarter of respondents intend to. In Austria it’s 29 percent, and in Switzerland and Great Britain a third of providers (33%). But that won’t hold the new endings back, Rickert is sure: “At the latest since we’ve known that Amazon and Google have applied for large portfolios of new TLDs, there’s been no doubt that in particular the global players will take the new endings to the world.” The domain providers themselves are optimistic about the future, and expect growth in their revenues, although the mood is more cautious than in previous years. They see the greatest danger for the domain industry in the use of apps and search engines on mobile devices.
The Registrar Atlas 2013 can be downloaded for free:
https://numbers.eco.de/wp-content/blogs.dir/55/files/2012/04/20120416-RegistrarAtlas2012_EN.pdf.
