On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 03:10:43PM +1000, Vic Cinc wrote:
> you can argue over the historical accuracy over which name space did what
> when but it doesnt change the fact that australia for a wealthy country has one of the lowest
> name space penetrations in the world.

I really don't consider the amount of registered domain names an
indication of how wealthy a country is. It only shows how wealthy
the registars are.

> the rules have significantly stagnated take up of names in australia. even a little
> tiny country like belgium has a million names (double our numbers) with
> half our population.

Belgium isn't that small. For example, it has two languages so a
lot of the domains are registered twice for the same name.

Please walk with me (data coming from the CIA world fact handbook.
Despite their bad information gathering now and then, I do still
consider it an authoritative source of information)

I have always considered the statistics of .be, .de and .nl more
or less the same population consistency and economy style. So what
you say about .de you can say about .nl and .be:

Belgium has 10 million people, 2.2 million internet hosts and 5.1
million internet users. And 1 million domain names.
Ratio: 0.22 / 0.51 / 0.10

The Netherlands has 16 million people, 7 million internet hosts and
11 million internet users. And 2 million domain names.
Ratio: 0.43 / 0.68 / 0.13

Germany has 82 million people, 7.7 million internet hosts and 48
million internet users. And 9 million domain names.
Ratio: 0.09 / 0.59 / 0.11

Except for the number of internet hosts, this is more or less right.


Let's see the rest of Europe:

The UK has 61 million people, 4.5 million internet hosts and 38
million internet users. And 5 million domain names.
Ratio: 0.07 / 0.62 / 0.08

High internet uptake, but a lower domain name ratio.


France has 60 million people, 3 million internet hosts and 26 million
internet users. And 490 thousand domain names.
Ratio: 0.05 / 0.43 / 0.01

And a very much lower ratio here. 


Australia has 20 million people, 5.3 million internet hosts and 14
million internet users. And 500 thousand registered domains.
Ratio: 0.27 / 0.70 / 0.03

Japan has 127 million people, 21 million internet hosts and 86
million internet users. And 830 thousand domain names.
Ratio: 0.17 / 0.68 / 0.01



What does this show? That the population, the number of internet
hosts, the number of users and the number of domains registered
have absolutely nothing in common.



Last one, if you're looking at these big top-level-domains, you
need to look at the number of domains active vs the number of domains
parked, the expire rate of the domains, the registration rate and
the renewal rate.

If 100 domains expire today, and 100 new ones are registrered, the
growth is 0. If 100 domains get renewed today, the growth is still
0. But you still make 200 * AU$ some random number. Not bad for a
industry where the only real costs are the people to sell the goods.


Edwin

-- 
Edwin Groothuis      |            Personal website: http://www.mavetju.org
edwin§mavetju.org    |          Weblog: http://weblog.barnet.com.au/edwin/