UNESCO, Eurid and Verisign have released a detailed report on internationalized domain names.
The companies report certain success in IDN development worldwide. There are now 5,000,000 domain names in IDN domains, with five most popular browsers fully compatible with IDNs. The report also notes Russia's fast pace in promoting IDNs with rapid growth of the .РФ zone, as well as vast number of the registry collaborations with e-mail services and browser software developers. The authors also note that ICANN has put many efforts into enabling new gTLDs – and IDN gTLDs, in particular.
However, the entire state of matters in IDN domains is alarming, according to the report. Eurid, Verisign and UNESCO note that in 2015, there will be more Chinese-speaking Internet users than English-speaking ones; however, the IDN share in the global network accounts to only 2%, despite the language diversity of the planet. Moreover, the growth rates of the IDNs have been slowing year over year.
Another worrying fact is that the global network still lacks universal acceptance of the IDNs, with 92% of the popular websites not offering IDN compatibility and not allowing IDN accounts. Of all social networks, only Facebook boasts full support of the IDN. The situation is pretty much the same across mobile devices.
