Global registry operator VeriSign has published its June 2008 Domain Name Industry Brief (PDF). According to the report, the base of domain registrations has grown 26 percent in the past twelve months and six percent quarter over quarter. This marks yet another significant increase in the number of domain registrations and is further proof that there is no slowdown in sight.

There are now more than 162 million domain names registered; .com is still number one, followed by ccTLDs .de (Germany) and .cn (China). VeriSign reports that Germany’s .de TLD comes in second, but I have already heard reports elsewhere that China’s .cn has overtaken .de. Anyway, both of these country-code domains are highly popular and they will continue to grow as more and more people in Asia get reliable Internet access and IDNs (internationalized domain names) become more popular and more widely used.

But not only .cn has experienced double-digit growth quarter over quarter (it grew 23 percent), Poland’s .pl, Spain’s .es, Russia .ru and France’s .fr have seen large growth as well. There are big opportunities in local domain markets, so if you find yourself in the position to invest in foreign language domains you might want to look into this more thoroughly. Personally, I’ve recently been watching the German IDN market, although I haven’t committed to any investments, yet. China, Poland and Russia look very interesting too, in my opinion.

Another growth market one should keep an eye on is India. VeriSign says that, despite the fact that the .com and .in TLDs are well-known and established in India, most people still don’t understand what domains are and what services to associate with them. Therefore, the vast majority of domain registrants in India has been medium and large businesses. So there is lots of potential untapped when it comes to small businesses and private domain registrations. As soon as these groups will begin to demand more domain names too, both the primary and the secondary market will become even more interesting. At the end of the first quarter of 2008, there was a total of 1.2 million domain registrations in India, which represents a 46 percent increase over the same time last year. About 60 percent of these domains are .com or .net domains and 40 percent .in domains. I expect the number of domain registrations as well as the number of aftermarket domain sales in India to grow at similarly high rates in the future. Investing early could yield higher returns than waiting until demand for and knowledge about domains in India has finally gone up.