- 30,000 .asia applications during Sunrise period and Pioneers
- 300,000 domain applications submitted during Landrush
- 45,000 domains will go to auction

.Asia is expected to be popular in the Pacific Asia area as the use of social networks such as blog spaces (technorati.cn), video-sharing sites (youku.com), is growing fastly in the region and as businesses are taking advantage of the flourishing e-commerce sector.

According to CNNIC report, the number of blog writers reaches 47 million at the end of 2007. Recently, .cn has surpassed 10 million domains. Thus .com is facing a giant rival in this area. A research firm also announced that China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest web population, with now 220,000 million internet users (source: Zdnet). The future of Asian domain names seems to be optimistic!

• .asia : a new regional extension approved by ICANN
• .asia: updated application and auction lists
• The .me event calendar
• .cr domains: TLDs opening continues…
• 2008 outlook for .fr domain names

Meanwhile, the Pioneer Domains Program has been occurring. This period has been subdivided into 5 categories: initially Community Pioneers, Global Brand Pioneers and Partner Pioneers, then Celebrity Pioneers and Social Pioneers.

For applicants with intellectual property rights, the follow-up of .asia applications is consequently much more complicated, but necessary in order to react rapidly in case of infringing domain names. The .asia registry has adopted a dispute resolution policy, which allows complainants to submit their case to WIPO.

“Fortunately”, an auction process is set in case of several applications for a same domain name (view auction list). A few bids already exceeded thousands of dollars (see table below). Thus auctions appear as a way to solve conflicts, whether or not you own rights. The current auctions related to priority registration period will give a foretaste of the Landrush phase, starting 20th February 2008 and opened to any entity located in Asia.

Top 10 .asia auctions

source: DotAsia (2008.02.10)

• Dot-asia: Pioneer Domains Program starts
• .asia: Go Live period starts today!
• The .me event calendar
• The first figures about .eu launching
• .cr domains: TLDs opening continues…

The registry offers .asia domain names:

• containing generic words  (see prospective list of generic terms), opened to any individuals, companies and organisations suiting to eligibility criteria.
• containing well-known brands, restricted to holders of trademark registered at least in one country of DotAsia community and in several countries or regions.

The .asia domain applications are submitted to eligibility criteria. English words can be proposed, as well as Romaji (transcription of Japanese terms in Latin characters) and other language transcriptions, because IDNs are not supported yet.

However, there are several barriers for the submission of .asia domain proposals:

• set-up of a web project (concept, look and feel, content…) especially designed for the .asia domain name
• heavy application form: explaination of the domain name interest for the community, description of the marketing use, business plan, operational capabilities.
• marketing deposit: $10 000 for each domain name, however returned to all concerned applicants once the domain name is attributed.

A challenge process will be set for this program, in case of complaint by trademark holders. Therefore, we strongly recommend the surveillance of .asia domain name applications submitted during the Pioneer Domains program.

To be continued…

• .asia: updated application and auction lists
• The .me event calendar
• .asia: Go Live period starts today!
• Opening of the FI domain names
• .cr domains: TLDs opening continues…

The keywords containing ideograms can be costly compared to the gain of visibility. In fact, it is restricted to the Chinese territory and users whose ISP (internet service providers) are technically qualified to translate internet keywords into URLs.

Though the approach of these registrars appears to be legitimate, some of them do not hesitate to use litigious and aggressive methods to force registration for these internet keywords, but also for IDNs.

• Google better ranked than Baidu for search quality
• Domain name hijacking
• Opening of the FI domain names
• .hk : Launching of IDNs
• Are .eu ready?

ICANN

This corporation is made up of ICANN members that manage ccTLD registries in the Asian area. Registration of dot asia will be divided into 2 steps :

• first, the Sunrise Period for trademark owners then, the general opening for entities present in Asia Pacific.

Beyond the ".asia" opening, it is a matter of competition with the leading TLDs (particularly .com) and of Internet growth in the area. At this day, there is about 400 million internet users in Asia (see details in the table below).

Internet usage in the main Asian countries

Source : Internet World Stats
(data updated on September 2006)

• .asia: Go Live period starts today!
• 2008 outlook for .fr domain names
• Registration of internet keywords in China
• .asia: updated application and auction lists
• Is the .eu domain name a success?