The deadline for signing of the Registry Agreement by the companies applying for registration of their brands as new gTLDs imposed by ICANN passed away on July 29. The majority of applicants obviously didn't hurry with this step: about 170 dot-brand applications were still keeping "in course of contract registration" status one week prior to the expiration of a term. Commenting on this situation to Domain Incite, ICANN VP Cyrus Namazi expressed the opinion that many dot-brand applicants appeared to be unready to their start organizationally or technically. He also assumed that the expectations of companies connected with new domain market development could be a little overestimated.
Nevertheless, dot-brand applicants became considerably more active the last days of July. About 70 companies managed to sign the Registry Agreement. Therefore, such domains as, for example, .godaddy, .nike, .comcast, .mitsubishi will join a global network soon. However, about 50 applicants didn’t manage to meet the deadline. Now they can only ask ICANN for granting an additional delay for 60 days. If the registration agreement isn't signed by them and during this period, their applicants will be cancelled.
