Verisign released their latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief, covering the 1st quarter of 2015 (.pdf file), today.  The report revealed that the total number of domain names registered worldwide across all top-level domains had risen to 294 million by the end of the quarter. 6 million domains were added in 1Q-2015 alone, a 1.9% rise over the previous quarter. Year over year, total registrations jumped 6.5% with 17.8 million names added since the end of 1Q-2014.

Verisign's dominant .com extension, with 117.9 million domains registered, accounts for 40% of all registrations worldwide. Verisign also runs .net, which ended the quarter with 15.1 million registrations. Taken together those two legacy extensions alone give Verisign a 45% chunk of the market. The company said it added 8.7 

million new .com or .net domains in 1Q-2015, a bit higher than the 8.6 million they added in the same quarter a year ago. 

Total ccTLD registrations were approximately 136.9 million at the end of 1Q-2015, after 2.9 million new domain names had been added in the quarter (a 2.2% increase from the previous quarter). Year over Year, approximately 10.3 million new country code domain names were added, a good looking  8.2% jump in year. However, a large part of that can be attributed to the biggest ccTLD - .tk (with over 25 million registrations, attributable to the fact domains in the extension are given away free). If .tk is not included ccTLD year-over-year growth drops to 4.4%.

Their quarterly Brief is always chockfull of interesting information. You will find a lot condensed into one tidy infographic here. The Brief also includes a special article - “‘Mobilegeddon’: Good for Small Business?” which discusses the benefits of mobile websites for business.