Indications Point to Global Interest in China’s Internet Address Expansion
BOSTON, March 12, 2003 — An analysis of pre-registrations just released shows surging interest in the newly opened .cn domain, the official Internet address for the People’s Republic of China.
China has the world’s second largest Internet population with over 50 million users and is growing 50% annually. To accelerate growth, the Chinese government has decided to open up its Internet domain ".cn" without requiring a local presence. The "land rush" begins Sunday, March 16 at 11 pm Boston time (EST).
The stakes are enormous since the Chinese government is determined to bring its 1.2 billion citizens online. The highlights of the analysis by EnCirca (www.encirca.com), a domain name Registrar, lead to the following conclusions:
There is global interest in establishing a presence to serve the surging e-commerce market in China. The top ten countries represented by pre-registrants are shown below:
ranking country percentage
1 United States 46%
2 Germany 10%
3 Switzerland 9%
4 Canada 6%
5 United Kingdom 5%
6 Austria 5%
7 Australia 4%
8 Hong Kong 3%
9 Belgium 2%
10 Czechoslovakia 2%
Speculators are rushing to snap up the most desirable addresses for destination sites. Professional investors in the domain name industry are the first to recognize an opportunity in new Internet domains. The interest is higher than EnCirca has seen for other new Internet domain introductions.
Many famous trademark names are being reserved by speculators. Cybersquatters seem to be ignoring the battles that occurred in the .com Internet domain. This last point is problematic since the China .cn Registry dispute policies for these domains are not as trademark-friendly as the dispute policy used for the .com domain. This means that trademark owners will need to repeat the battle they waged in the .com namespace.
How the Analysis Was Conducted
The analysis is based on over 1200 pre-registrations collected by EnCirca.com, an accredited domain name registrar, over a 4-week period from February 1-28. Over 30 countries are represented in the sample. EnCirca executives are available for interviews and background.
About EnCirca, Inc.
EnCirca, Inc. was formed in 2001. EnCirca is a Massachusetts-based accredited domain name Registrar of the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). It provides registrations services for trademark owners, small businesses and consumers worldwide. In addition to .cn, EnCirca also supports .com, .net, .org, .biz, .info and .us. Visit http://www.encirca.com/ or call 1-781-942-9975 for more information.
Contacts:
Kate Moran
EnCirca
pr@encirca.com
781-942-9975
Thomas Barrett
EnCirca
tom@encirca.com
781-492-1315 (c)
