JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Research on
Domain Name Market
- jp ccNSO Meeting
March 9, 2010
Hiro Hotta, JPRS

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Overview of the Research

Research on Domain Name Market
by BayCurrent Consulting
in Q4, 2009
to identify
possible growth of existing domain name market
possible growth of potential domain name market

background
relatively low penetration of domain names in Japan
ongoing/emerging changes in domain name environment
growing E-Commerce
more diversification of usage
new TLDs coming

JPRS is granted to present the report

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Approaches
benchmark analysis
clarify gaps between markets in Japan and in other countries
analyze whether such gaps are to be reduced
study out the possible growth of Japanese market

penetration rate analysis

analyze market size, annual growth rate, and "# of registrants /
# of organizations" for individual business category
study out the potential of more penetration for each business
category

positioning analysis
extract key factors for registrants to choose TLDs
clarify the positions of JP and other TLDs in Japanese market
study out relevant positioning of each TLD
Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Benchmark Analysis

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

Market Size

600

518
c c TLD

500
400

.e u

gTLDs (o th e r th an .c o m)

.c o m

.com

300

230
200

90
.de

74

71

66

20

18

B elgium
5

11

11

Norway

22

New Zealand

24

Sweden

Canada

Netherlands

Italy

France

UK

Germany

US

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

45

Switzerland

51

Korea

.uk

52
.jp

A ustralia

100

Japan

Estimated Market size[Million USD]

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Analysis Method
1. Selected benchmark

.jp in Japan
.com in US, .de in Germany, and .uk in UK

2. randomly pick up sample domain names for each benchmark

3. browse their web-sites and divide them into 30 categories

for resale
for advertising products/goods/companies/...
for net-shopping
for search-site / portal-site
for Blog
for personal homepage
under construction
etc.

4. find big differences in usage between ".jp in Japan" and other

benchmarks
5. look into the background of differences
6. investigate whether such differences will be narrowed down
Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Existing market : Usage of .jp in Japan

market size
category
resale
0.35

market size [USD/person]

0.30

business

0.25

0.20

92.0
80.6
100

0.15

0.10

private

4.3
0.05

19.4

unclassifiable

0.00

(%)

[10-2USD/person]

resale

0.08
advertisement

18.86
net shopping

1.37
search / portal

0.31
BBS
BBS
0.29
site development support

0.27
affiliate

0.18
blog

0.14
SNS
SNS
0.06
CtoCEC(
EC
CtoC
0.06
other CGMs
CGM
0.04
site operation support

0.02
groupware

0.00
campaign

0.00
datacenter

0.00
URL
URL listing
0.61
under construction

1.27
cannot browse

0.08

blog
0.37
BBS
BBS
0.16
CGM
other CGMs
0.08
HP
personal homepage
0.08

search / portal
0.04
SNS
SNS
0.04

groupware
0.02
URL
URL listing
0.14

0.14
under construction

0.00
cannot browse
web-
0.96
under construction
web
6.18
no websites

total

0.3%
59.2%
4.3%
1.0%
0.9%
0.8%
0.6%
0.4%
0.2%
0.2%
0.1%
0.1%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
1.9%
4.0%
0.3%
1.2%
0.5%
0.3%
0.3%
0.1%
0.1%
0.1%
0.4%
0.4%
0.0%
3.0%
19.4%

0.32 [USD/person]

market size is measured with the total of domain name registration fee
Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Big differences between benchmarks

.jp in Japan .de in Germany .uk in UK

.com in US

resale

x 315

x 217.2

x 145

advertisement

x 2.1

x 1.3

x 2.2

net shopping

x 2.9

x 3.8

x 4.7

search / portal

x 66.3

SNS

x 89.5

Blog

x 9.7

private CGM

personal home page

x 32.0

x 13.3
-

- : not a significant difference

x NN : NN times bigger in terms of market size per person

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Possibility of usage expansion

For each of the following usages with big differences

resale
advertisement
net shopping
search / portal
SNS
Blog
private CGM
personal home page

possibility of (future) usage expansion is studied by investigating

whether followings are big hurdles for .jp, through comparison
between .jp in Japan and each benchmark

channel
promotion
regulation
business custom

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Possibility of usage expansion

channel

promotion

regulation

business
custom

resale

-/A

advertisement

-/A

-/A

net shopping

-/A

search / portal

SNS

Blog

private CGM

personal home page

A(chievable) : current difference can be narrowed

N(on-Achievable): current difference is hard to be narrowed
- : no big difference exists
Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

10

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Non-existing market in Japan

Service
ISPs give domain names to their subscribers by default

large number of registrations of .de in Germany

some for .uk in UK

Analysis
no big hurdles for .JP in Japan, compared to .de in Germany
possible to be provided by ISPs

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

11

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Analysis on
the Potential of Domain Names
in Each Business Category

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

12

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Analysis Method
1.

pick up the following 3 figures for business categories from statistical

materials such as Japanese government white papers

2.
3.

categorize .jp registrants (by sampling) and identify the number of

registrants in each business category
calculate "penetration rate" in each business category

4.

market size ($ per person)

annual growth rate
number of organizations

# of registrants / # of organizations

make a table of "potential of domain names" in each business

category by checking the combination of

market size ($ per person) : bigger has more potential

annual growth rate
: bigger has more potential
penetration rate
: smaller has more potential

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

13

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Analysis result
market size

annual growth

saturation rate

total

telecommunications

AA

amusement

medical

AA

education

AA

welfare / caring

AA

AA

AA

wholesale

AA

AA

foods & drinks retail

professional service

AA

AA : very hopeful A : hopeful C : of small hope

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

14

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Positioning Analysis
Focusing on
Domain Name Selection Criteria

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

15

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Analysis method
registrants are categorized into the following segments
business (6 combinations)
big company / medium company / small company
B to B / B to C

individual (personal)

Interview registrants to identify their criteria in choosing

domain names
co.jp / .jp / .com / .net

categorize the criteria into the reasons below

reliability
trust
familiarity
fashionableness
regionality
popularity
price

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

16

JAPAN REGISTRY SERVICES

Positioning of TLDs

co.jp, .jp
and .com/.net
markets are
disjoint.

business
0 .0

BtoC
BtoC

Price is not
important
independently
of company
size or their
customers.

BtoC
BtoB

BtoC

1 .0
BtoB BtoB

/
familiarity
/ fashionableness
2.0

reliability / trust

1 .5

1.0

.com market
and .net market
are overlapped.

:big
:medium
:small

BtoB
BtoC BtoB
BtoC
BtoB

BtoB BtoB
BtoC

BtoC

3.0

0 .5

.co.jp
.jp
.com
.net

BtoB
BtoC
BtoC
BtoC
BtoB BtoB

to price

BtoB

BtoC

insensitive

1.0

2 .0

individual

Copyright 2010 Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd.

2 .5

sensitive
to price

2.0

3.0

Individual registrants
are more sensitive
to the price than
business.
Both .jp
and .com/.net have
their own market.

3 .0

17