National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) is working hard to make .in domain extension into a hot property across the world. The World's largest domain name registrar, GoDaddy also agrees that .in domain name is fast becoming a 'catchy domain extension.' NIXI is already in talks with twenty of the biggest registrars of the world to promote .in domain. Six new registrars, including three in the top-10, have been added in the last two months. This takes the total number of registrars to sixty.
According to NIXI, over five lakh domain names ending with .in have been registered, but registrars are convinced that there is scope for more. Its natural that once a domain name extension starts getting popular, companies rush in to protect their brandnames. As growth in the domain registration industry is expected to slow over the next three years in the US and Europe, so developing markets like India and China are expected to grow. The majority of the growth in domains name sales will come from Bric nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China), according to the latest report from Melbourne-based Map Research. It also forecasts that the domain name industry will grow to $5.3 billion by 2011 from $3.6 billion last year and number of registered domains to grow from the current 185 million to 300 million by 2011.
Moreover, hundreds of top level domain names are expected to be released later this year, as the US-based Internet governing body, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) says current top-level domains such as .com have reached a saturation point, resulting in long and unwieldy internet addresses and creating the need for new releases. Obviously, companies will have to spend much more on protecting their brand names by registering new addresses on various domain names.
And furthermore a new dimension will be added to the new name economy as language domain names come into the picture. It will create new potential for those in domain business as as language specific domain names will also need to be protected.
