Size of .cn registration base falls 75% from peak.
Thanks mostly to tighter controls and rules on registration, China’s .cn domain name count keeps falling.
According to data collected by HosterStats.com, there were about 3.5 million .cn domain names registered at the end of January.
That’s a far cry from the over 14 million .cn domain names that were registered at its peak in February 2009. At that point .cn had more registrations than any other country code top level domain.
In January 2010 China abruptly stopped overseas registrars from registering .cn domain names. This began a downward plummet in the number of domains registered.
New regulations required anyone who wanted to register a domain to show identification. Then in June 2010 .cn domain name holders were asked to confirm their registrant information directly with the registry within 15 days or risk losing their domains.
.Cn was very popular prior to the restrictions for a number of reasons. Most importantly, it was offered for about 14 cents per registration.
JS says
changing the rules every now and then doesn’t help
Jp says
I actually think .cn had a clever business model. Let everyone go nuts registering names for the launch to cover the startup overhead, then get all the names back in the available pool so real registrants actually have a chance to register some and make some real websites therefore creating the brand around the tld. So long as the original registrants paid a low enough Reg fee, nobody isgetting burned that bad on the Lost registration so nobody will make too big a stink.
DomainersChoice.com says
The drop is mainly due to the strict registration policies and the price increase from before around 1 RMB to now around 30 RMB per year.
here you can see the breakdown of .CN registrations
http://www1.cnnic.cn/html/Dir/2011/02/24/6019.htm