AFNIC, the French national registry and operator of the .FR domain zone, has unveiled the results of a study on the net growth of the domain market between March and September of this year. The company has indicated that the data for the period between June and September is preliminary, so the market growth analysis may be inaccurate. In addition, not all country-code TLDs were covered by the study, which only focused only those with the highest growth. Still, the growth dynamics appear to be very interesting.
While in March, registrations in “traditional” TLDs accounted for 74 percent of the net market growth, in September they only made up 38 percent of the growth. Conversely, registrations in the new TLDs surged, rising from 15 percent of the net growth to 35 percent. The national TLDs demonstrated modest, but stable growth. Their contribution to the net growth increased from 10 percent to 27 percent.
According to experts, this is largely explained by the massive influx of new TLDs into the market, aggressive marketing campaigns to promote them and the price difference for domain registration and renewal in various domain zones. However, if the total number of registrations is considered to be opposed to the net market growth, the new TLDs have failed to have a significant impact on the overall picture. As of late September, traditional TLDs accounted for 54.5 percent of all registrations worldwide, the share of country-code TLDs was 44.5 percent, and the new TLDs accounted for just about one percent of all registrations.
