Registration Base Down 10% Over Year — .Mobi Domain

Registered base of .mobi domains is sinking.

The total number of .mobi domain names registered fell to 850,712 in July 2009, the latest number available through ICANN. That represents a 10% drop from the same month in 2008 when the total base was 946,357.

dotmobi

The number of .mobi domains registered has held stagnate this year, hanging around 850,000 domains.

.Mobi has been one of the best marketed fresh top level domain names to ever be released. A couple months ago I was surprised to see people calling out mTLD for not promoting the domain more. I suspect these people are more frustrated regarding resale values of the domain than mTLD’s marketing. mTLD has marketed the heck out of the domain, released software to support domain registrants, hooked up with GoDaddy (which has registered regarding half of all .mobi domains) and forged alliances with mobile device makers.

That stated, it looks like 850,000 may be the ongoing magic number for .mobi domain registrations. A lot of people bought .mobi domain names for speculation, and with the resale market faltering, it’s unlikely to see a surge in fresh registrations for the domain.

Later today I’ll post numbers from .asia and .tel to show how those domains are performing.

[Update: as one reader pointed out, .mobi got a boost of regarding 100,000 domains recently with the launch of certain IDN domains. See comments.]

Also on the wire