What extension will be top for IDN Domains in Japan?
I’ve been involved with IDNs for over a year now. I’ve seen people put out their true thoughts on which extensions will be used for IDN Domains in Japan. I’ve kept my thoughts to myself for a while about.
So the question is:
What extension do I think will be top for IDNs in Japan.
The possibilities are:
.com, .jp, .net, .tv, .ws, & .cc
If you are in the domain industry at all, or a person who has used the internet at all you can tell already that .cc, .ws, & .tv are the least likely of the 6 to be on top.
.net unfortunately automatically loses to .com it’s just the nature of the internet.
So we are left with the big two, will it be IDN.jp or IDN.com
There are quite a few things to look at
1. Price
2. Amount of registrations
3. Visability
Japanese IDNs in Japan are called 日本語ドメイン(Japanese domains). Many people may not realize but the price of a IDN.jp is pretty low compared to even a normal dot com
These are current prices from 3 different domain registries
Onamae.com:
ASCII.com 3,800円
ASCII.jp 7,940円
IDN.com 3,800円
IDN.jp 3,960円
Value-Domain.com
ASCII.com 790円
ASCII.jp 3590円
IDN.com 790円
IDN.jp 640円
21-Domain.com
ASCII.com 1,000円
ASCII.jp 3,570円
IDN.com 3,570円
IDN.jp 980円
Even though prices for dot coms might be cheap at Domain Registry services in English, Japanese use registries in Japanese mainly. These 3 represent a very large portion of where domains are registered in Japan.
Next we have amount of registrations. This is somewhat based on an educated guess. For the last year I’ve seen a few promotions for Japanese Domains all of them involved the jp extension.
As far as visability this is a tossup since there aren’t many major IDN sites yet. But you can punch in any popular keyword in Yahoo Japan Japan like 仕事 (Job) ローン (loan) you’ll see that about 75% of the major ads come from domains with .jp or co.jp.
With this all boils down to is is this. It might be more expensive in the longrun but…
I have to admit I personally think dot jp will be more popular in Japan than IDN.coms
There are dot jps that are reserved so the dot coms are the only choices for these.
I actually own more dot coms than dot jps. I don’t think that dot coms are second rate I just must admit that jp is actually going to be a bit better.
Will I sell either for a low price?
Heck Nah!!!!
My point is just this. The jp will get more promotion initially. The average user will become familiar with jp IDN domains first I strongly believe. Dot coms will not be second rate.
Anything is possible though, there is time for people to help control the market…