No surprise: .cn falls.
It should really come as no surprise. As I predicted a couple months ago, China’s crackdown on the .cn domain name has led to a precipitous drop in the number of registered .cn domain names.
Data from HosterStats.com shows that the registered base of .cn domain names has dropped 39% in the first four months of the year, from 13,459,133 at the end of 2009 to just 8,254,681 at the end of April 2010.
The drop is due to a number of changes by China in how the .cn domain is administered. Primarily this is a crackdown on ownership, requiring each registrant to provide significant documentation in order to retain their .cn domain. The domain was even shut to new registrations by non-Chinese registrars for awhile. The changes caused big registrars, including GoDaddy, to drop the domain.
Another factor leading to the decline is the end of promotional pricing. For a while .cn was available for 1 yuan. This low price led to a lot of the problems that caused China to crack down on how the domain was being used.
HosterStats.com points out that .Cn has now fallen to the third largest ccTLD behind .de and now .uk.
They are just cleaning up the mess. I have had no problems with my .cn. No id required so far, all trading is not restricted and you can still register them. The porn and illegal sites caused the problems and they are addressing it. Many registries do not allow porn and illegal sites, China is just enforcing known policy. Values in the long run will increase substantially in idn.cn and idn.com. Depressed prices are a huge opportunity at the moment.
imo.
Best Regards.
Agree with the above: values in the long run will increase, if the registry is kept secure. That’s why dot CO is doing things right. Dot CO is marketing itself as a highly secure extension which doesn’t allow proxy ownership – favorable to corporations!
The drop in registered domains should not be due to the new restrictions since pre-existing domains are not impacted. .cn registrants are still free to renew and transfer without providing additional documentation called for by the new regulations.
I suspect the increased renewal cost of domains registered under the pricing promotion is the more likely cause.
Tom Barrett
EnCirca, Inc
@ Tom Barrett – hmmm, I know Go Daddy was under the impression it needed to verify for each existing registration, and that domains would be deleted if they couldn’t complete the verification.
Andrew not only GoDaddy was under this impression. Many registrars were. The drop in registration numbers is a result of the end of the promotional period. Now they try to keep the .CN extension clean and even make alot more money than before, so the drop to number 3 is an acceptable drop.
As of today, existing renewals and transfers DO NOT require documentation.
The new CNNIC restrictions applied only to NEW registrations effective from December 14, 2009.
But this could change in the future. Here is a 1/27/10 note from Neustar:
“To date, CNNIC has not formally stated that they will be requiring the verification of existing registrations by international registrants. However, there is a strong possibility that in the future, CNNIC will require documentation to be provided at the time of renewal or transfer.”
@ Tom – thanks for the clarification