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West.cn to prop up .xyz renewals with $1.5 million subsidy

Kevin Murphy, May 30, 2016, Domain Registries

Leading Chinese registrar West.cn has said it will subsidize .xyz renewals to the tune of $1.5 million.
According to a West.cn press release, CEO He Xiaojiang made the announcement alongside XYZ.com counterpart Daniel Negari at meeting in Beijing on Friday.
The registrar’s .xyz customers “are going to get high rebate back from West.cn so that they can get very low renewal fees”, according to a translation of the original Chinese.
The subsidized renewal price, which starts in June, will be RMB 18 ($2.73), according to the company.
That’s about a $7 discount on West.cn’s usual renewal price of RMB 64.
First-year .xyz prices at the registrar are currently RMB 8 ($1.22).
West.cn is believed to have well over a million .xyz domains on its books. With over a third market share, it’s XYZ.com’s biggest registrar.
The press release points out that West.cn is not getting a special rate from XYZ (which would be against ICANN rules).
Negari declined to elaborate on the specifics of the subsidy.
But in what is no doubt a related move, he told DomainInvesting.com yesterday that XYZ has “reserved several million dollars to be spent with registrars and on advertising platforms for our 2 year anniversary”.
This ad spend will be made over the month of June, he said, to coincide with the June 2, 2014 general availability launch of .xyz.
Fifty registrars are participating, he said, calling it the “biggest sale” the industry has seen.
Whether through heavily discounted renewals or bargain first-year regs, it seems the company is set on making sure its DUM volume does not dip as its anniversary approaches.
It’s not unusual for registries to do special offers to coincide with launch birthdays.
.xyz currently has about 2.8 million registered domains, but about 1.8 million of those were registered after June 2015 and are not in need of renewal before the promotion period expires (though registrants can of course renew whenever they like).

.top gTLD tops a million as China goes domain nuts

Kevin Murphy, January 17, 2016, Domain Registries

China-based new gTLD .top has become only the second new gTLD to pass the one-million-domain milestone.
The gTLD, managed by Jiangsu Bangning Science & Technology Co, had 1,000,469 domains in its zone file on Saturday, an increase of 5,808 on the day.
The zone has grown by 453,833 domains in the last 90 days, according to DI PRO stats.
It’s growing just slightly faster, in percentage terms, than new gTLD volume leader XYZ.com’s .xyz.
The rapid growth can no doubt be attributed largely to price, feeding the current Chinese appetite for domain investment.
Its most successful registrar, West.cn (Chengdu West Dimension Digital Technology Co), is currently selling .top names prominently for CNY 4 for the first year. That’s just $0.60.
The registry says that registrants come from 231 countries and regions. On its web site, it highlights France’s Gandi.net and Gibraltar’s budget registrar AlpNames as key international partners.
However, the latest registry reports show that over 90% of its sales are coming from China-based registrars.
Despite .top being a Latin-script TLD, European and North America registrars seem to account for a very small number of registrations.
It’s not even carried by the likes of GoDaddy and eNom.
The third-place 2012-round new gTLD is currently .wang, another Chinese registry, which yesterday had 628,125 names in its zone file.
Number four is .win, which despite being run by Gilbraltar-based Famous Four Media is utterly dominated by sales via Chinese registrars.
At number five is .club, with 552,065 names and a much more international distribution of registrars.