There are around 348 million domain names under management around the world and in the year to the end of January 2019, growth slowed to its lowest ever year-on-year rate of 3.7% according to the latest CENTRstats report.
Within Europe, where the majority of CENTR members are located, there was a sharp decline in long term growth trends towards the end of 2018, which the report says could be the result of higher rates of deletes through the year. Growth among European country code top level domains (ccTLDs) has followed a similar pattern to the global market with a year-on-year growth of 2.3%.
Despite the growth slowdown, the report says local European ccTLDs, based on a median of 32 European countries, are maintaining their local market strength with a market share of 54%, while other European ccTLDs account for 8%, .com for 24%, new gTLDs 2% and other legacy gTLDs 7%.
By region, growth among ccTLDs for the 12-month period was highest in Africa’s 58 ccTLDs, growing 6.1% to 3.4 million. In the Americas among their 53 ccTLDs, domains under management grew 2.9% to 14.0 million, in Asia’s 98 ccTLDs there was growth of 1.9% taking domains under management in the region to 65.7 million.
Notable declines among European ccTLDs occurred in .se (Sweden) of 10.8%, .ru (Russia, 6.5%), .eu (4.1% due largely to the threat Brexit is posing to UK-based registrants and deleting tens of thousands of abusive domain names), .de (Germany, 0.7%) and .uk (United Kingdom, 0.4%). There were increases in .ca (Canada) and .fr (France) of over 4%, .ch (Switzerland, 3.3%), .it (Italy, 2.3%) and of less than 2% for .es (Spain), .at (Austria), .be (Belgium), .pl (Poland) and .nl (Netherlands).
Among new generic top-level domains (new gTLDs), registrations have stabilised and now among the top 300 gTLDs (legacy and new) there has been a growth rate of around 4.9% for the 12-month period. They now account for 72% of the global market share, with no signs of change. New gTLDs represent around 12% of the total domains under management, while some of the legacy gTLDs (notably .org, .net, .info and .mobi, among others) have seen their market share decline, taking their market share to 17%.
To download the complete CENTRstats report, and previous reports, see:
https://centr.org/statistics-centr/quarterly-reports.html