Domain Magnate

According to this thread on dnf and this one in idnforums there might have been a $xxx,xxx sale for an idn domain.

The domain was not publicly disclosed, however it is a Russian term. Alexa is 0, so there is probably not much traffic.

Other posts indicate that  there were other previous $xxx,xxx sales and the idn  market is simply not transparent enough, however several investors are spending big bucks on names they think will be much more in the years to come.

From idnforums:

I recently bought 1 idn for xxx,xxx
Some may say it is way over priced if you are comparing it to the current ‘market’ that is practically isn’t born yet but i prefer to pay more now then getting to the point where it just wont be for sale.

The $xxx,xxx sale has been confirmed as a Russian IDN , the $x,xxx,xxx “sale” still waiting for further info.
Also confirmed a Chinese seller sold a .cn for a good $xx,xxx to a business in China.

IDN domains are a highly controversial market. Many domainers believe it’s a waste of money while others predict it to take off big time. What’s your take on that?

DomainPulse reports:

China (.cn) has overtaken Germany (.de) to become the world’s largest country code for domain names. With an average of around 400,000 to 500,000 .cn domain names registered each month it would be safe to assume there are more than 12,300,000 names registered compared to 12,098,279 .de names registered at the time of writing.

The two ccTLDs (country code top level domains) are much larger than any of their competitors with the next ccTLD being .uk (United Kingdom) with 6,880,775 and close to three million .nl (Netherlands) domain names.

Of all TLDs, ccTLDs and gTLDs, only .com is larger than .cn and .de, followed by .net, while .org and .uk are roughly equal in fifth position.

The success of Germany’s country code has been due to few restrictions on the eligibility of registrants for .de domain names and a low price. Although France has a similar population, there are currently only 1,153,637 registrations.

These extraordinary registration rates are a result of extremely low reg fees in .cn domains. Regular domainers from all over the world can buy .cn domains for just $0.13 at a variety of sites. A predeposit is usually required.

Bigger resellers can get the domains for even cheaper paying just pennies on the dollar.

My guess is once the reg fees rise there registration counts for .cn will fall dramatically, unless we start seeing some high sales to support the tld growth

dnexpert reports:

CNNic, the Chinese .cn domain name registry have announced they have passed the 10 million domain registrations mark in January 2008.

While other countries take pride in reaching 7 figures, China is strongly striding towards being the leading nation in terms of ccTld registrations. Only Germany with their .de ccTld have reached 10 million registrations in the past.

China is also fast becoming the leading nation in terms of internet users with 210 million internet users in China today.

You can find more information about .cn domain names at the CNNic registry website.