Half of all .mobi registrations are at one domain registrar.
I was just looking through tallies of total domain names per registrar by TLD as of the end of 2010. This graph of .mobi registrations at the end of December is telling:
There’s only one thing to notice on this graph: Go Daddy. The domain registrar manages 49% of the total base of .mobi. This is in line with the registrar’s claim that it registers about half of all new domain names, since .mobi is a relatively new domain.
Go Daddy did a lot to push .mobi and was key to its initial success. Yet consider how much power Go Daddy now has over .Mobi. It can literally strangle it by increasing renewal costs. Yes, it would be shooting itself in the foot and people could transfer their domains. But it still means the company brings a lot to the bargaining table when it comes to ensuring high renewal rates and the long term success of .mobi.
This should say something to companies wishing to introduce new generic top level domain names: the key to your success lies with Go Daddy. And Go Daddy holds all of the keys.
Will that change? Not in the short run.
New TLD operators should be lining up to strike deals with Go Daddy. Of course they will have to pay to play.
Kevin Murphy says
I was going to make an “elephant in the room” joke, but decided against it.
David J Castello says
Looks like GoDaddy bagged the elephant with dotMobi (sorry, I like a little cheese with my whine…)
John says
How many elephants does it take to screw Godaddy?
(Sorry bad attempt at a joke)
gpmgroup says
Is the profile of GoDaddy registrants different from other registrars?
Do registration patterns at GoDaddy eventually get reflected at the other smaller registars?
theo says
GPMGROUP i doubt very much this is different from the smaller registrars. But only when it comes to a few specific .TLD’s.
.mobi will fit the profile so to speak.
.tel will not since GD does not support it.
ccTLD’s forget it. You cannot use GD here for a pattern since GD is a no player when it comes to ccTLD’s ie GD plays no role when it comes to ccTLD’s.
GD charges way to much for ccTLD’s and they lack the knowledge to deal with them so they have to charge more. For .co.uk they rely on Keysystem. And these guys know how to handle it but they want a cut also ,simple as that.
Bottom line for the most gTLD’s GD is leading. for ccTLD’s they don’t even come close.
Andrew Allemann says
@ theo – would be interesting if anyone has ccTLD data. ICANN only publishes data for gTLDs/sTLDs
gpmgroup says
thanks theo
M. Menius says
This is a very interesting comparison graph. I would love to see the same registration ratios for the top 10 tld’s. I would suspect that Netsol has a much higher % of .com and .net registrations. I remember them being the big registrar before GoDaddy became so well known.
Daniel Fernandez says
It’s interesting to see 3 Chinese registrars in the top 10, registering .MOBI domains extremely disproportional to their total volumes.
Gives you a fair idea of .MOBI popularity in China.