As New GTLDs are released ccTLDs Continue To Grow, .TK, .DE, .UK

There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding the release of new gTLDs recently, but let’s look at some numbers. As far back as 2008, there were a total of 63 million ccTLD registrations, that figure has been steadily increasing over the last 5 years. While some years showed slower growth than others, the original number of ccTLDs has nearly doubled its 2008 registrations. That growth is not expected to subside anytime soon.

It’s now October 2014, and domain name registrations continue to come in daily, with over 282 million domain names registered globally. This time last year, there was an 8% increase in domain name registrations, by the end of the year that figure went even higher.

When it comes to TLDs let’s look at growth for each of the largest top level domains, .COM boasted a whopping 115 million registrations, .NET grew to 15.2 million, .ORG stands right around 11 million registrations, and .INFO is making its way to 6 million.

ccTLDs showed a 3% increase over last year with a total of 119.5 million domain names registered. Further breaking down that 119.5 million, where has the largest percentage of domain registrations come from? There are a total of over 26 million Tokelau (.TK), almost 16 million Germany (.DE), close to 11 million United Kingdom (.UK), nearly 10.8 million China (.CN), the Russian Federation (.RU) rings in with close to 5 million, and the Netherlands (.NL) almost reaches 6 million registrations. Other ccTLDs include the European Union (.EU) at 3.8 million, Brazil (.BR) with 3.5 million, Australia (.AU) sporting just under 3 million, France (.FR) and Italy (.IT) at 2.8 and 2.7 million respectively, Argentina (.AR) just below 3 million, with Poland (.PL) and Canada (.CA) in the 2.5 million range, and Switzerland (.CH), United States (.US), Spain (.ES), Colombia (.CO), India (.IN), and Belgium (.BE) all tipping the lower end of the scale with just below 2 million registrations each. These numbers will continue to grow with the rate of internet access to more remote areas that once had no connectivity.
Additional growth is anticipated as democracy spreads, and citizens of other countries are granted the freedoms of entrepreneurship. These events coupled with the release of new gTLDs, leaves a ton of potential for domain name registration growth. Along with there being over 290 ccTLDs, that include 207 sovereign states, and one could pretty much have their pick of domain name, much like the beginning of the .COM domain availability.

Currently, there are an estimated 845,000 4 letter .com domains available, however the saturation of this domain leaves the available number of “useable” domains rather limited, with availabilities consisting of random letters and numbers. Increase the number of characters used to create a domain name to 13 and you have an almost limitless number of available domains that tops 230 quintillion.
Yet there are still other new gTLDs that will be released within the coming years which may decrease growth in current root zones, while increasing growth in newly released zones. Donuts expresses an average of 6,803 domain registrations for each of the 147 new gTLD domain extensions, and while seeing regular growth, they anticipate further development in domain registrations with the October 1st release of .CITY, followed by the expansion of the .HEALTHCARE domain which releases on October 15th.