China is a great domain market for those who like to study data and try to draw a big picture of where the country will be heading. There are reports constantly published to help you understand the internet in general and domain name in particular.
The latest one I just finished reading is 互联网发展趋势报告2017 (translation: Internet Trend Report 2017) released only a month ago by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a think tank for the Chinese government in the area of innovation and development of industry.
Reading the report from the domain name perspective, I came away feeling very encouraged about the future of this market, and my confidence is supported by the following two points.
1. Growing internet economy
| Year | GDP Share |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 14.2% |
| 2008 | 15.2% |
| 2011 | 20.3% |
| 2014 | 26.1% |
| 2015 | 27.5% |
This table shows the share of the internet economy as percentage of China’s GDP. Obviously, the internet economy has been growing significantly, and the growth will continue because of favorable fundamentals such as large population, savvy internet users, supportive government, booming startups and incubators, and aggressive VC funding. The larger the internet economy becomes, the more Chinese companies will get online, which translates to continued demand for domain names.
2. China is No. 2 on Top 20 Global Internet Companies list (market cap)
| Rank | Company | Country |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Apple | USA |
| 2 | Alphabet | USA |
| 3 | Amazon | USA |
| 4 | USA | |
| 5 | Tencent | China |
| 6 | Alibaba | China |
| 7 | Priceline | USA |
| 8 | Uber | USA |
| 9 | Baidu | China |
| 10 | Ant Financial | China |
| 11 | Salesforce.com | USA |
| 12 | Xiaomi | China |
| 13 | Paypal | USA |
| 14 | Netflix | USA |
| 15 | Yahoo! | USA |
| 16 | Jing Dong | China |
| 17 | eBay | USA |
| 18 | Airbnb | USA |
| 19 | Yahoo!Japan | Japan |
| 20 | Didi Chuxing | China |
USA is the biggest (13), followed by China (6). It is clear there are only two major players in the internet arena. Considering the fundaments I mentioned in point 1, I speculate that more Chinese companies will get on to this list. This means premium .com domain names will continue to sell well in China because the largest Chinese companies all want to have the best (most expensive) domain names for their corporate websites. Also, China will remain a very important domain market for domain investors.
Therefore, I’m working hard to develop a strong network of executives from Chinese companies. I read everyday, and then pick the most interesting pieces to put into my daily educational series and share with Chinese executives on LinkedIn. I believe “give and it’ll be given to you.”
Note: You can download the Chinese report from: http://www.catr.cn/kxyj/qwfb/bps/201701/P020170110333987961362.pdf
Thanks for keeping us up to date. I agree long term looks great for business’s in China online. I use google translate to help with articles as I dont speak Mandarin. I pirchased 互联网域名.com to list some names on geared to the Chinese market. Not sure if it translates out perfectly but it was available. Most inquiries come direct via whois so far. Keep it up!
Thanks Steve. I suggest to have some Chinese friends and get help from them when dealing with Pinyin or Chinese IDN names. I do just the opposite, by getting help from native English speaking friends.
Interesting… Seems more Chinese companies will be in that top 20 list than USA by 2020.
Thanks for sharing Kassey 🙂
I’m glad you like it. I agree with you.