Record Sedo auction sells over $1.5M in .mobi domain names.
dotMobi fans are cheering today after Sedo concluded its most successful .mobi auction to date. According to an unofficial tally from Domain Name Wire, the auction cleared $1.5M in sales.
The highest sale was Music.mobi, which sold for an astonishing $616,000. Games.mobi sold for $401,500. Compare this to the record sale prior to this event, Flowers.mobi for $200,000.
With prices this high, major investors clearly took part in the auction. Both “music” and “games” are prevelant on mobile phones, so it’s no surprise that these domains sold for a premium. But these prices were unexpected by even many of the biggest .mobi promoters. Earlier this week I predicted that Games.mobi might break the Flowers.mobi record, but these numbers are simply astonishing.
Other notable sales include:
sports.mobi $101,000
movies.mobi $82,000
juegos.mobi $61,000
game.mobi $61,000
videos.mobi $51,000
photos.mobi $51,000
fashion.mobi $32,000
video.mobi $25,555
dictionary.mobi $21,500
musica.mobi $20,600
movie.mobi $20,500
[Update 12/6/07: We now know the buyer, thanks to a link on Sahar’s blog. And it’s not who you think. It’s not an end user, but an investor. That said, there had to be many other people bidding on these names.]
Way to go Mobi!!
These are killer sales
Nice auction, with all this money being invested looks like dot mobi might fly after all.
This exceeded all expectations – MOBI is now in the big time show —
for those who got in mobi early, congrats to all of you.
I’m now a believer. Show me the money. And you did —
.mobi? A mirage extension in the making…
Great mobi sales around a growing foundation. Dotcommers are already on the forums trying to find new ways to trivialize mobi’s obvious popularity. Fact is that dotcom is a great extension, but demand continues to grow for quality domain names in other extensions. Welcome to the internet.
A Big hoo-rahh! to all of us who believe in .Mobi
After buying 4000 .mobi names we are really happy to see our stocks soar.
Does anyone know who bought Music.mobi or Games.mobi????
Anyone interested in Muzak.mobi?
Good job .mobi, the little extention that could…….
There’s never been an extension that brings out so much passion amongst domain investors. People either love it or hate it, and they want to talk about it.
Some people talk about how great it is because they have personally invested. Others, like me, thinks this domain extension “has a point”, unlike .info, .biz, etc.
However, it’s highly speculative. Although there are more mobile devices connected to the internet than full-blown computers, very little web surfing goes on. And the iPhone let’s users automatically append .com to what they type. It also shows “real” web pages well.
But today’s activity was truely shocking. Are these domains really worth the high prices paid?
Sportsbetting.mobi for $41,000 this just tels me that all the betting names in the .mobi are going to be worth big money.
This makes whoever owns sportsbet.mobi worth some cash along with any sport,casino related .mobi ending in betting or bet..
To many names to comment on but I,m sure we will be all suprised buy who the buyer is:)
I own mu6.mobi.. anyone interested ?
JetRay, don’t get so excited yet. I haven’t hear of end users buying these domains. If the end users never show up, the value of these domains drops big time. You can only flip domains to other investors so many times.
That said, if an end user comes in an pops $1M for a good domain, then you should cheer.
FYI, the .mobi auctions were originally extended due to a server outage. This has one guy really frustrated who thought he bought Music.mobi. But it makes sense that Sedo extended these auctions. Here’s the note from Sedo:
We are aware the there are some problems with the .MOBI Auction at this time. Due the down time we were not able to extend the auction before the set closing time. Some bidders may have received emails saying that they have won the auction, however because the system was down the highest bid at the time the system failed are not binding according to our terms and conditions. The auction will be up and running very shortly and will be extended by until 3:30pm EST to ensure all interested parties can place their bids. While this is unfortunate, the good news is that the problems are due to the large number of last minute bidders! This is the first time an auction has brought down our servers due to such a large amount of activity.
Be assured that if there is any additional down time again, it will again be extended to ensure all bidders can place their desired bids. Please check the auction details page to ensure that your bid was accepted. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
I am personally suing the MTLD and Sedo since I was the original winner of Music.mobi
The records are a fake. I had a proxy for $611k and I request that it be removed. I won the initial auction and will take recourse / legal action
http://mobi.music.us
Here’s my take on the auction…
It’s simple! There were NO bids in the final minutes of the auction because no one could bid. It’s not fair that people who got out-bid 1 second before the crash (by $100 in my case) just lose a domain because of LUCK on behalf of the lucky bidder!
If e.g. end user 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9….. lose out on having a fair chance of winning an auction, just because lucky bidder no. 1 GOT LUCKY….there would be more law suits to deal with than you can imagine.
The only thing Sedo are responsible for is not waiting for enough time to pass before restarting the auction.
Automated emails will not be considered as sufficient evidence in a court of law to confirm a fair winning bid.
This was one time I was glad I took the plunge and purchased a number of dotMobi domains back in Septermber 2006. I’ve been developing for fourteen years and kicked myself way too often for not getting in on some great domains when the opportunity came knocking. I’ve had a lot of fun developing the sites with their unique abilities and even have had a few make it to the MTLD showcase. Offering the target of a perfect score of 5.00 is a great way to have the developers strive for perfection in their sites and adds a level of quality to the dotMobi domains.
There are still a few good domains available as I picked up one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis of Narnian lore, just last week and have just begun developing it.
I have a list to watch for those dropping periodically and am sold on the convenience the next generation will be demanding as the base line. This was certainly one of the best thought out names with support to match. Our college students have shown how fast they assimilate the sites in their daily routine viewing on the 2 inch screens.
Although mega bucks doesn’t dictate the quality of a domain name it does indicate the demand from those with the resources who believe they can recoup their investment and push the future acceptance a little sooner.
Good luck to all of you with dotMobis! Here’s to convienent and usable sites that will give proper credence to the dotMobi extensions.
My point of view is .com, .info and .net are toplevel domains.
just noticed sportsbetting.mobi is now a fuctioning website, looks good for a mobi site, almost made a bet haha