Rumors are flying and Chinese news sites are reporting the sale of Nubia.com to mobile phone maker Nubia for US$2m. Some sources have speculated that GoDaddy was the seller.
According to the news release from mobile news site Qudong, Nubia.com (reported as "nubia.con" due to a typographical error) was owned by GoDaddy and the buyer is ZTE, owner of the Nubia brand, which paid US$2m for it.
Sohu also mentioned GoDaddy was the registrant owner and further added that the purchase is to enable Nubia to go global:
The domain name is not resolving at the time of publishing, but a placeholder for the new website was briefly shown:
Techweb.com.cn disclosed the source of its news as Weibo user Shu Ma Feng Bao (nickname) who said that Nubia bought Nubia.com from a mysterious US citizen for $2 million.
C114.net commented that this purchase indicates that Nubia will be entering the global market in full force, in response to its earlier announcement of going fully global. The company has already established presence in Russia, India, and South East Asian countries.
eName gave more details, showing a Whois record of Nubia.com updated on December 23, 2015 with the new registrant being Nubia Technology and the registrant email address ending with @zte.com.cn. This shows that Nubia was the buyer and it is related to ZTE. Regarding the seller, eName also stated that the seller is a mysterious US citizen:
I did some research with help from Eric Lyon, and this is what I've found:
Regarding the seller, it seems that GoDaddy was the registrar of Nubia.com for many years, from at least 2007 to 2014. During that time, the domain name was parked and its registration was kept private using GoDaddy's Domains By Proxy® service. From its historical Whois records, it's not possible to confirm whether GoDaddy owned the domain name.
Regarding the buyer, eName's Whois screenshot confirms that Nubia is the new owner. While Nubia's corporate site does not explain its relationship with ZTE, Baidu Baike (translation: "Baidu Encyclopedia") says that the company was founded in 2012 as a ZTE subsidiary but changed its name to Nubia in June of 2015.
Regarding the sale price, all 10+ Chinese sites that I checked reported the US$2m price tag, though no confirmation has come from Nubia yet.
According to its corporate site on Nubia.cn, the brand was created in 2012. In 2014, Nubia became the talk of town when President Jinping XI was seen using Nubia Z5 Mini to snap shots at a soccer game in Germany. The brand "Nubia" is the name of one of the birthplaces of ancient civilization with deep and rich culture. In this particular case, the company started with a non-Chinese name and then translated it phonetically to its Chinese brand
This expensive acquisition of a .com name indicates China's huge appetite for global brands built on the .com namespace. If you own a .com domain name, you may want to do your research to find out whether the same name is already being used by a Chinese startup.
According to the news release from mobile news site Qudong, Nubia.com (reported as "nubia.con" due to a typographical error) was owned by GoDaddy and the buyer is ZTE, owner of the Nubia brand, which paid US$2m for it.
Sohu also mentioned GoDaddy was the registrant owner and further added that the purchase is to enable Nubia to go global:
The domain name is not resolving at the time of publishing, but a placeholder for the new website was briefly shown:
Techweb.com.cn disclosed the source of its news as Weibo user Shu Ma Feng Bao (nickname) who said that Nubia bought Nubia.com from a mysterious US citizen for $2 million.
C114.net commented that this purchase indicates that Nubia will be entering the global market in full force, in response to its earlier announcement of going fully global. The company has already established presence in Russia, India, and South East Asian countries.
eName gave more details, showing a Whois record of Nubia.com updated on December 23, 2015 with the new registrant being Nubia Technology and the registrant email address ending with @zte.com.cn. This shows that Nubia was the buyer and it is related to ZTE. Regarding the seller, eName also stated that the seller is a mysterious US citizen:
I did some research with help from Eric Lyon, and this is what I've found:
Regarding the seller, it seems that GoDaddy was the registrar of Nubia.com for many years, from at least 2007 to 2014. During that time, the domain name was parked and its registration was kept private using GoDaddy's Domains By Proxy® service. From its historical Whois records, it's not possible to confirm whether GoDaddy owned the domain name.
Regarding the buyer, eName's Whois screenshot confirms that Nubia is the new owner. While Nubia's corporate site does not explain its relationship with ZTE, Baidu Baike (translation: "Baidu Encyclopedia") says that the company was founded in 2012 as a ZTE subsidiary but changed its name to Nubia in June of 2015.
Regarding the sale price, all 10+ Chinese sites that I checked reported the US$2m price tag, though no confirmation has come from Nubia yet.
According to its corporate site on Nubia.cn, the brand was created in 2012. In 2014, Nubia became the talk of town when President Jinping XI was seen using Nubia Z5 Mini to snap shots at a soccer game in Germany. The brand "Nubia" is the name of one of the birthplaces of ancient civilization with deep and rich culture. In this particular case, the company started with a non-Chinese name and then translated it phonetically to its Chinese brand
努比亚, which has no intrinsic meaning.This expensive acquisition of a .com name indicates China's huge appetite for global brands built on the .com namespace. If you own a .com domain name, you may want to do your research to find out whether the same name is already being used by a Chinese startup.
