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Sweden's
.SE Registry Claims Victory Over .Com as ccTLDs Enjoy
Growth Spurt in Major Markets Around the Globe One
of the most interesting trends
in 2009 was the growth spurt we witnessed in ccTLD
sales despite a global economy going through one of the
worst economic downturns in the past century. As we
noted in our latest
monthly newsletter, the total dollar volume
of ccTLD sales reported to us in 2009 soared 28%
above the total for 2008. This happened even though
total sales reported for the entire domain
aftermarket slid 12.5% year over year.
Clearly the major country codes have been outperforming
the market as a whole, and doing so by a very impressive
margin.
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Yesterday,
I ran an item about increasing interesting
in Australia's .au extension, especially
now that registry operators there have removed
some of the severe restrictions on .au ownership
(prior to mid 2008 resale of .au domains was prohibited
- talk about a damper on aftermarket sales!).
Today I ran across an article about surging
ccTLD sales in another market - Sweden. Sweden's
country code is .SE and this headline on
the .SE registry's website caught my eye - The
.SE Domain Dominates the Swedish Market While
.Com is Receding. The article
says that according to a report published in
January 2010 by the government commissioned Central
Bureau of Statistics (SCB), "The .se
domain is growing stronger while .com
is losing its’ foothold in Sweden."
According to SCB’s report, IT
Use By Enterprises 2009, 88%
of all companies chose to register .se
addresses, while 32% opted for .coms. |
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Danny Aerts, the CEO
of the .SE registry said, “We see the same trend
internationally. Country code top-level domains,
like .se, are growing faster compared to the
generic top-level domains, like .com, .net
and .org, in other markets as well. In
Sweden, .se is the obvious top-level domain choice
for companies. Now we are also clearly seeing that
smaller companies and individuals are to a larger extent
choosing .se over other top-level domains."
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According to the
SCB, Swedes are choosing .com less often. In
2008, 42% chose .com among companies with
more than ten employees, but in 2009 .com's
market share among those companies fell 6%
to 36%. Small companies with less
than ten employees went in the same direction.
In 2008, 34% of those companies chose
.com, while in 2009 that number shrunk to 28%.
At the end of 2009
there were 936,428 active .SE domains, a
12% jump from the 834,004 that were
registered at the end |
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