Use of the .Asia extension is becoming common place amongst Asian conglomerates with Honda adopting .Asia in 2008.

The MitsubishiElectric.Asia domain name is being used on the companies cable TV broadcast advertising campaign throughout Asia.

If Owen is going to keep on blogging about .mobi’s decline, expect more posts soon on the continued uptake of .Asia

I thought that was a bit of a steal at the time. I just checked Microphones.Asia and it now redirects to http://www.sennheiser.com

If I was the previous owner of that name I would be a little bit cheesed to see the new owner is a large German conglomerate with a long history in the audio industry (Founded 1945 / Revenue 300 Million € in 06).

Welcoming another corporate to the ranks adopting .Asia

My first .Asia in the wild. I’d previously seen them spring up in PPC campaigns. I’d seen them in newspapers. I’d even seen them on television screens. But this, the first one on the streets.

Hua Hin is a small beach town with a population of 50,000 people, so if you take the rest of Asia in to account with dozens of sprawling cities, proliferation is going to be rapid.

I’m almost certain that right about now a bunch of people in the domain industry are asking themselves…

Why were we so wrong?

Prior to the launch of .Asia domain industry leaders and most commentators in domain forums wrote .Asia off as useless and unlikely to go anywhere (a little bit like .mobi :)).

My guess is most domain forum commentators were American domain kiddies who’s knowledge of Asia extended as far as noodles and Bruce Lee.

As for the larger players in the Domain Industry, as they have spent the best part of a decade watching their dot com investments turn into a valuable assets it is easy to see how they may have been skeptical about rapid acceptance and adoption of a new niche name space.

The best explanation I can see for the change in time frames comes from Eric Schmidt’s recent presentation at Bloomberg.

At 12:15

“These changes are happening faster than ever before. The statistics are quite interesting.  50 million users in North America took 37 years to adopt radio, 15 years for television, 6 years for cable, and 3 years for the internet.”………..”But clearly time is compressing”

So however long Rick Schwartz had to wait to see Time Square covered in .com, take that figure and divide it. New name spaces Aren’t going to take decades to take off.

My prediction is that in just over the next 2 years, Asian cities from Tokyo to Tashkent will be dripping in .Asia

It seems to be a cliché in the domain industry to say so, but I think the buyer got a steal.

Here’s why.

Asia is the most populated region in the world. Even though .Asia is a new space it appears that it will be readily adopted by businesses to market to the region.

Asia is likely to play a big roll in the growing crowdsourcing industry. I have used crowdsourcing services to build relationships with content and media producers in Thailand and the Philippines and find it a really efficient way to source talent at reasonable prices. The industry clearly has a future.

So the buyer has acquired the best name to operate in the industry, in a region that is highly relevant to the industry. After paying the aftermarket rate, the ongoing expense to maintain that highly valuable asset is an inconsequential $20 per year.

Best of luck to the buyer. Looking forward to see what ends up on the name.

A few more .Asia spotted in this weeks aftermarket report.

Accountancy.Asia going for $2962 US
TopShopping.Asia made $2000 US

Must have been a pleasant week for Bangkok based idevelop.TV flipping two .TV names clearing over 10K

Tours.TV for $8500US and NA.TV reaching $2750.

Good to see a local in on the game.

Wonder if Narcotics Anonymous is building a new site?

The domain was hand registered for $20 at the .Asia go live so $500 represents a reasonable ROI after just a few months.

Was tempted to flip the name and do something exciting for myself……like buy a new pair of sneakers

But still a little bit early in the game for that

**UPDATED**

Noticed on SEDO that the same person who offered on the name picked up a hyphenated .com for $4100US.

It’s a shame it’s really only a one word term

This weeks SEDO sales report included 3 .Asia names.

esports.asia - 3,500    EUR
icasino.asia - 3,500    EUR
imobile.asia - 3,500    EUR

Whoever picked these up is clearly trying to duplicate Rick Schwartz’s success in selling iReport.com to CNN for 750K.

Previous aftermarket sales include LasVegas.Asia for approximately $30000 US, and ILoveYou.Asia for  $1102 US.

KeepWalking.Asia is a touching media piece that takes visitors on the journey of a successful architect who is encouraged by his friends to pursue the dream of becoming a movie director. Throughout the adventure, the message is clear. Keep walking, keep dreaming, keep working hard, keep sharing……but most importantly, keep drinking. Hard liquor is best.

Welcome to .Asia Johnnie.

Domain king Rick Schwartz talks about the feeling he had when walking through Times Square and realising it was wall to wall .coms. So when I’m kicked back in a Singapore hotel room watching cable TV and see the emergence of big brands pushing their .Asia over mass media, I see hope for the .Asia name space as well.