I recently came across a chart of the most popular top-level domains (TLDs), compiled by Stephane Van Gelder. Although I keep track of country code TLD registrations for the Country Codes of the World map (see also related CircleID post), Stephane tracks all domains, including .com, .net., etc. And when I saw it I got to thinking…

Here’s the table of the figures I want to focus on:

What makes this chart so interesting are the growth rates: .com is growing at 5% and .cn is growing at 18%. Granted, it’s easier to grow at 18% when you’ve only got 12 million registrations, compared with growing at 5% when you’ve got 76 million registrations.

But growth is growth and .cn is clearly on a roll.

And China has a lot of headroom for growth in terms of Web users and potential domain registrants. I am confident that .cn will reach 50 million registrations over the next 3 years.

At about that point in time, .com should be around 100 million registrants—in no danger of losing its number one status.

However, if the rate of growth of .com registrations were to decrease while .cn rate of growth continues to increase, it’s reasonable to wonder if we will one day see the number of .cn registrations surpass .com registrations?

I realize this is a far-fetched scenario.

After all, it’s reasonable to assume that companies that register .cn may also register .com—and the majority do just that.

But it’s certainly something to contemplate. And even if .cn never comes close to surpassing .com, the overall point I’d like to emphasize here is that .cn is now the world’s second most popular top-level domain—and likely to remain that way for many years.

What do you think?

More under: Domain Names, Top-Level Domains

A recent Infonetics press release says “WiMAX has gained such momentum across so many regions that it is no longer sensible to suggest that WiMAX growth will be flattened by the emergence of LTE [Long Term Evolution] in the next few years.”

Probably true, but it’s also clear WiMAX will never reach the scale of either mainstream wireless family, i.e., WiFi or GSM/3GSM. By comparison with these giants, WiMAX will be a fringe operation. The critical issue is volume, and what counts is the wireless technology brand, not the technology itself.

Both WiFi and GSM/3GSM have already evolved through multiple generations of technology while maintaining backwards compatibility and thus interoperability. Within the GSM community, there may be no commercial LTE subscribers as yet and relatively few HSPA subscribers, but more than a billion GSM/3GSM devices are manufactured each year with individual chip set product lines running multi-hundred million units per year. WiFi chipsets also run at hundred-million units per year rates. These volumes (and the guarantee of interoperability) mean GSM/3GSM and WiFi devices will always be substantially lower cost than anything WiMAX aspires to. [Note: today there are slightly less the 2 million WiMAX subscribers while optimistic projections suggest there will be more than 100 million in 2012.] WiMAX may have technology leadership, but it can’t catch up. WiFi and GSM are the wireless families that will prosper, each in it’s sphere—WiFi for unlicensed, GSM for licensed spectrum.

WiMAX will benefit from technology specific licensing in some emerging markets, i.e., valuable spectrum tied to specific technologies, So WiMAX will survive, even while it’s more expensive than LTE or WiFi. As for market share, the optimistic parallel is “CDMA cellular”, i.e. IS-95/ CDMA One/ CDMA 2000. CDMA had technology leadership and it managed to capture nearly 20% of the 2G cellular market at it’s peak, but it could never overtake GSM and, today, major operators are jumping ship to join the 3GSM crowd.

There may be a decade of contention, but in the end, WiMAX will die or be absorbed into the GSM brand.

More under: Access Providers, Broadband, Mobile, Wireless

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