Austria Has a 'Domain Capital'?

NIC.AT, the official registry of the country-code Top-Level-Domain of Austria, has recently released their second NIC.AT report.  In April, we featured a blog posting that provided the inaugural analysis and report of NIC.AT that many of you enjoyed. In this post, we would like to provide a summary of the second and newest report, including some very interesting trends and statistics.

Summary:

• The .AT ccTLD continues to be in high demand. As of July 1, 2010 the .AT zone had over 939,951 registered domains.  It is expected to reach the 1,000,000 milestone by the end of this year!  This is an impressive number considering that Austria does not have a huge population base.

• Among all registrants, private individuals register an equal share of .AT domains as businesses and organisations together. Just over half (53%) of all domains are held by legal entities such as businesses and organisations, with the remainder accounted for by private individuals.

• There is a strong appetite for .AT domains from abroad. According to NIC.AT, “Demand for .AT domains from Germany are undiminished, with almost 190,000 .AT domains currently registered with German owners. The .AT suffix is also proving increasing popular among the Swiss, and somewhat surprisingly, the English.”
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• .AT Registrations from Abroad
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• Holzhausen?  This tiny town in upper Austria with a population of 800 people is the domain capital of Austria. The number of domains registered outnumber the locals with an impressive 1.58  registered .AT domains per inhabitant.

• The report also covered the imminent introduction of new gTLDs  by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). In fact, NIC.AT is leveraging their experience as a registry operator and now offers consulting services to applicants considering applying for a new gTLD. It also provides a Registry-in-a-box service to these applicants.

Why Register an .AT domain?

• If you run a business that operates in Austria or sells into Austria, an .AT is a must.
• Idioms: There is an increasing use of .AT domains to capitalize on catchy domain names that represent certain English expressions / idioms that feature ‘at' at the end or include ‘at’ in the expression. For example, Form.at, Bureaucr.at  'good.at', 'targeted.at', etc.  In fact, we came across the following US-based company that operates a free online  website builder for restaurants called letseat.at
• Austria does not limit the registration of .AT only to its citizens, but allows .AT domains to be registered by anyone worldwide.

Click here to access the entire NIC.AT report.