Mitsubishi Electric’s new Asia Pacific portal is built on MitsubishiElectric.Asia
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
A few weeks back when reading through the weekly DN Journal sales report I noticed Microphones.Asia had changed hands for 1190€.
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
I was in a small town on the Gulf of Thailand called Hua Hin when I saw it.
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
I recently completed my first aftermarket sale of a .Asia name via the SEDO aftermarket. Crowdsource.Asia sold on SEDO making it in to the first 10 reported aftermarket sales of .Asia domain names.
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.
I may make this a habit 
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?
Surprised to receive my first offer on a .Asia name via SEDO. Was totally not expecting any action on .Asia for at least 2 years. The $500 offer was for a technology trend term that has been going around a bit lately.
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
That’s the take home message from the latest big brand to build on .Asia
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.
As the dot Asia auctions come closer to completion, the .Asia registry has seen it’s first six figure sale. Discover.Asia closes at auction for just over $112,000 US. The domain industry thinks .Asia is worth nothing, someone out there with a spare 112K seems to disagree.
Some signs are appearing of adoption of the .asia extension with major corporates introducing .asia names just weeks after .asia launched.
One example includes www.levis.asia
This morning I was in a Japanese coffee shop drinking an Ice Lemon Tea, and noticed one of the local magazines had already replaced their old url with .Asia
All seem like positives for .Asia, possibly even more positives than .eu
You might notice that there is not a great deal of buzz about the net’s newest TLD .Asia. Domain industry folk are certainly not excited. Reading the banter on industry forums such as namepros.com, .Asia is described as “crap” or “as worthless as .mobi”
Domain industry big daddy Frank Schilling has openly expressed a lack of interest in the .Asia name space, encouraging domain investors to focus on ccTLDs and generic TLDs such a .com (primarily), .net, .org etc.
So what’s the vibe here on the ground? In Asia.
Big money is flowing through the .Asia domain auctions.
Taking a look at some of the top auction names it is clear to see that at least some people with dollars believe in .Asia
sushi.asia $22,500
cooking.asia $21,500
water.asia $19,388
Some naughtier names have auctioned for over $70,000 US
Big spends on on generic .Asia names are taking place across the entire spectrum of meaning. Any words with broad meaning and commercial value are fetching auction prices anywhere between $3000 - $5000. Good luck picking one up at the registry. Even xylophone.asia is gone
So lets break down some of the arguments that have been passed for and against .Asia.
Against:
Asia is a western conception. It has been said that people of the region, Japanese, Korean, Thai, view themselves in terms of their nationality, not as “Asian”. This is a compelling argument and makes you wonder what meaning people of Asian countries will derive when surfing the new name space. If .Asia doesn’t resonate, maybe it wont succeed.
On top of this, Asia is awash with name space. Each country with its own ccTLD as well as language / character IDN’s. With this fragmentation of name space, language and meaning, who’s to say which name space will dominate and retain the most traffic.
For:
Very little of the of the trade or commerce that takes place across borders in Asia uses ccTLDs or IDNs.
Tourists booking their holiday in Thailand don’t book on .co.th
A development firm opening office in Tokyo is unlikely to use .co.jp
An importer ordering products from a Chinese factory is unlikely to buy from .cn
The emergence of a new name space to represent the region may serve as the new home for the international commerce that takes place in Asia.
Not to mention that Asia is booming. Previously closed economies are increasingly opening up, and with the ease of travel borders are becoming fluid.
Maybe the changing state of the region makes it the perfect time for the new name space that names in the domain business love to hate.
