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CAICT report on the Chinese domain industry

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This report shows what domains are big in China.

Picture of a report pie chart and the words "domain report"

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) recently released a research report (Chinese language only) on the Chinese domain industry. I just finished reading it and found some bits and pieces that may help you understand the domain market in China.

Published in July this year, the report is called “Internet Domain Name Industry Report (互联网域名产业报告)”. A large part of the report covers general discussions such as DNS and ICANN, but it also contains some data relevant to domain investment.

There are now 43 million domains registered in China. The largest extension is .cn with 20 million domains (47% of total), followed by .com with 12 million domains (29%). The top 10 are .cn, .com, .中国 (IDN China), .icu, .top, .wang, .net, .xyz, .vip, and .club.

You may think Chinese IDN domains must be very popular in China because of its 1.4 billion Chinese-speaking population. Unfortunately, the answer is no. Domains in Chinese IDN extensions account for only about 6% of all domains registered in China. This is because there are still many issues to be tackled, such as user awareness and support by applications.

How does China compare with other countries? The United States has the largest number of domains registered, followed by China, Germany, Tokelau, and Canada. When we look at domains in country extensions only, if the free .tk (Tokelau) domains are excluded, then .cn is the largest country extension in the world.

Finally, the United States has the largest number of domain registrars in the world, followed by Japan, Germany, UK, France, and then China.

 

Donuts completes acquisition of four financial top level domains

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Company completes acquisition of four more top level domains.

Donuts Inc logo on a picture of donuts

Top level domain name company Donuts has acquired four financial-themed top level domain names: markets, .trading, .forex, and .broker.

A source told Kevin Murphy about the acquisition in February, and he wrote about the history of seller Boston Ivy. ICANN recently published the assignment agreements for all four domains showing an effective date of May 7.

Commenting on the transaction, Donuts CMO Mina Neuberg told Domain Name Wire:

Donuts continues to invest in building the TrueName domain portfolio. It is our goal to make sure that registrants can find the most relevant and memorable domain name for their business or project. The addition of top-level domains like: .broker, .forex, .markets, and .trading to our portfolio helps push us closer to achieving this goal.

All four domains have fewer than 2,000 domains in the zone file. Wholesale prices appear to range from about $10 to $40.

The Donuts acquisition might create more visibility for the domains. GoDaddy still doesn’t carry the domains but will likely add them now that they are part of Donuts.

In other Donuts news, the company ranked on this year’s Inc. 5000 list with three-year growth of 93%.

 

 

Total domain counts are falling. Here’s why

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.Com is doing fine, but the same can’t be said for other top level domains.

Red arrow trending down and to the right on a blue background

Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) has published its quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief (pdf) for the first quarter of 2021.

The company calculates that total domains registered across all extensions fell 2.8 million, or 0.8%, since the end of 2020. Total domains fell 3.3 million, or 0.9%, compared to the first quarter of 2020.

This might come as a shock to people who have heard about exploding growth in domains during the pandemic and with Verisign raising its guidance for the year.

While .com continues to grow at a steady clip, total country code (ccTLDs) and new top level domains have fallen.

Verisign figures the total base of ccTLDs fell 1.5% compared to the end of last year and 0.6% compared to a year ago.

The biggest fall has been in new top level domains, which have plummeted 29.3% over the past year and 12.3% in the last quarter. This has to do with a handful of top level domain operators halting or reducing low-cost registration promotions.

What Donuts’ data tell us about the new top level domain market

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A look at premium sales and which TLDs drive the most volume

Picture of four donuts with the words "Donuts domain trends"

Donuts, the largest top level domain operator in terms of number of strings, published a report about its sales in October. While the company doesn’t provide absolute numbers in its report, it does give us some insight into the new top level domain market.

Let’s start with premium domains. Donuts lists its top 20 premium domains registered in October, ranked by wholesale price. The top sale was prime.mortgage, followed by health.studio.

Running some checks at domain registrars, I believe the wholesale price for prime.mortgage is about $2,500 and health.studio is about $1,000. The 20th highest sale on the chart, millionaire.dating, is about $800 a year wholesale. So sales of $1k+/year premium domains are still meager, but there’s a lot of activity sub-$1,000. (Keep in mind that this list doesn’t include renewals of premium domains.)

The company also lists its top 10 top level domains in terms of registrations. The list is topped by .live again, but this doesn’t tell us too much about success. While .live is one of Donuts’ better domains, first-year registrations are only a few bucks, so price has a lot to do with the volume. It would be interesting to see this list ranked by total registration revenue.

As I pointed out last month, people tend to register second level domains in new TLDs that are similar to the terms they register in .com. Online and Life are the top two at Donuts.

You can view the full monthly report here.

Big shakeup at MMX after accounting investigation

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CEO and CFO are out after board investigates company’s finances.

Picture of Toby Hall, CEO of domain company MMX

MMX CEO Toby Hall speaking at a domain name event. He has been removed from the company after an accounting investigation.

The Board of top level domain name company MMX (London AIM: MMX) has concluded an investigation into revenue recognization at the company. The casualties include the company’s CEO, CFO, and income statement.

Earlier this month, the board announced it was looking into a contract under which it believed revenue was prematurely recognized. The board issued a statement today:

The Board believes that revenue attached to the specific contract has been incorrectly recognised. As previously announced, cash of $1.125m was received in connection with the specific contract and revenue of $938,000 was recognised in FY-2019. Following its investigation the Board believes that any cash sums initially received pursuant to this contract should have been classified as a deposit against future sales and then recognised as revenue as the Company’s partner made sales to end-users. To date, the Company’s partner has made $201,900 of end-user sales under the contract.

The board also discovered two additional contracts that were incorrectly recognized:

In addition to the above, the investigation has identified two additional contracts entered into in FY-2019 totaling $790,000 where receipts were incorrectly categorised as revenue. These contracts were offset with payment contracts that have been recorded as deferred charges or capital expenditures, thereby impacting earnings. The reversal of these amounts will not impact the cash position of the Company.

The impact on MMX’s financials is as follows:

restated financials for MMX

It’s unclear who the counterparties were on these transactions.

Toby Hall, Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Salazar, Chief Financial Officer, have resigned from the MMX board in the wake of the investigation. They have apparently left the company, too: Tony Farrow has been named interim Chief Executive Officer and Bryan Disher is the interim CFO.

MMX postponed a £3.0m tender offer it planned for November.

 

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