50 provides clues for domain investing — China Trademark
Kassey Lee examines more data regarding what domains Chinese firms choose.
When running a business, we need to know our clients in order to provide the right products to them. This is also true when selling domains to end users in China.
For that purpose, I have studied the top 100 internet firms in China and Fortune China 100 firms. Today, we’ll look at “China Trademark 50” published by World Trademark Review, which lists firms in China holding the most trademarks. These firms are leaders in corporate China and therefore can show us the overall domain preference of Chinese firms.
Below is the list. Since two firms are foreign (Disney and Sanrio) and 10 firms could not be found, that leaves 38 firms on the list which are meaningful for our analysis.
| Rank | Firm | Domain |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tencent | Tencent.com |
| 2 | Jingdong | JD.com |
| 3 | Alibaba | Alibaba.com |
| 4 | Huawei | Huawei.com |
| 5 | Baidu | Baidu.com |
| 6 | Alpha Group | gdAlpha.com |
| 7 | 4399.com | 4399.com |
| 8 | Yili Group | Yili.com |
| 9 | Geely | Geely.com |
| 10 | Xiaomi | Xiaomi.com |
| 11 | China Central Television | CCTV.com |
| 12 | ANT (Alipay) | Alipay.com |
| 13 | Xindeyuan | Xindeyuan.com |
| 14 | Bytedance | Bytedance.com |
| 15 | Wisdom Group | Youjiazhenhao.cn |
| 16 | Vivo | Vivo.com |
| 17 | Midea | Midea.com |
| 18 | Jialan Group | Jala.com.cn |
| 19 | Didi | DidiChuxing.com |
| 20 | Gongchi | (not found) |
| 21 | Gree | Gree.com |
| 22 | Sheng Interest | (not found) |
| 23 | Ping An | PingAn.com |
| 24 | Weiyu | (not found) |
| 25 | Saiyo | (not found) |
| 26 | Mengniu | Mengniu.com |
| 27 | Durian Technology | Liuliankeji.com |
| 28 | Qiyi | Qiyi.com |
| 29 | Dajia (Kuaishou) | Kuaishou.com |
| 30 | Luzhou | Luzhou.com |
| 31 | Caigang | (not found) |
| 32 | Youku | Youku.com |
| 33 | Oppo | Oppo.com |
| 34 | Baolans | (not found) |
| 35 | Yuanqi Forest | YuanqiSenlin.com |
| 36 | Three Fast | Meituan.com |
| 37 | First Automobile Works | FAW.com |
| 38 | SF Express | SF-Express.com |
| 39 | Gestalt Health | (not found) |
| 40 | Yanghe | YangheGlobal.com |
| 41 | Great Wall Motors | GWM-global.com |
| 42 | Jiumu | JomooGroup.com |
| 43 | Jiezhi | (not found) |
| 44 | Gome | Gome.com.cn |
| 45 | Disney (USA) | Disney.com (USA) |
| 46 | Xiao Dan Sister Network | (not found) |
| 47 | Townsend Pijian | (not found) |
| 48 | Sanrio (Japan) | Sanrio.com (Japan) |
| 49 | Sinopharm | Sinopharm.com |
| 50 | China Unicom | ChinaUnicom.com |
Here are the results. 92% use .com and only 8% use .cn domains. No other extensions are involved. The median length of the names (excluding extension) is 6 characters and the majority (84%) are 10 characters or less.
29% of the domains are not brand-matching. For example, Great Wall Motors is known as GWM but its corporate domain is GWM-global.com, not GWM .com (developed). Another example is Alpha using gdAlpha.com, not Alpha .com (developed). An opportunity arises if you happen to own the upgrades for non-brand-matching domains.
Pinyin domains are most popular at 46%, followed by English-based domains at 35%. One firm uses a numeric domain (4399.com), and three firms prefer acronyms: JD.com, FAW.com, and CCTV.com.
The fact that 10 out of the 50 firms could not be located is very telling. It shows that many Chinese firms still do not understand the importance of domains and making them visible in the digital world.
In short, invest in short Pinyin/English-based .com domains for end users in China.
