IDNs reach nearly 10% usage in China

iResearch Consulting a leading Chinese internet research company, has released an interesting report on domain usage in China for 2008.  The report portrays IDNs in a somewhat negative light, stating that English language domains are still greatly favoured over IDNs and IDNs have so far failed to make a impact. It is of course, pretty much to be expected at this time, with the high usage of ie6 in China, and the low awareness of IDNs. This will ultimately change in the future with compatible browsers, email software with IDN support, and the lower use of ie6 (hopefully will be seen with the upcoming release of Windows 7), and awareness of IDNs (when ICANN get off their backsides and .中国 is placed in the root – which the Chinese Domain Name Consortium (CDNC), Co-Chairman Qian Hualin seems very confident will happen before the end of October.) source: http://tech.163.com/09/0831/15/5I29RHF8000915BF.html.

The study shows that international domains have moved ‘only’ to 10% of the market size, which was actually more than i would have thought and actually looks a decent market share already, when looking at the numbers below.

The domain extensions currently used by Chinese enterprises consist of:

49.2% Non-IDN – Chinese extensions: .cn, .com.cn
38.4% Non-IDN – Other extensions: .com, .net, .org etc

5.7% Chinese IDN – Chinese extensions .公司, .网络, .中国
4.1% Chinese IDN – Other extensions: – 中文.com, 中文.net, etc

0.3% .mobi
2.3% other (.gov, .edu?)

On the positive side the report does mention though that Chinese domain names have Chinese characteristics, are simple and easy to remember, provide a cordial strong sense of belonging, and are increasingly being given more attention by domestic enterprises in China.
It also states with new mobile technology and the newly rolled out 3G network that they is definetely scope for their gradual growth.

In seperate reports for the 2nd Quarter of 2009, China’s online shopping market was 56.36 billion Yuan (8.2 billion USD) – up 92% year-on-year. China’s online game market was 6.9 million yuan for the same period, and China’s search engine market was 1.72 billion Yuan)

http://iresearch.com.cn/