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.mobi Are .mobi domains still worth buying?

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Hello Members,

.mobi domains used to be good, when there was a significant gap between desktop and mobile interface and it needed a bit of distintion. But now, everything is on mobile.
So, .mobi I dont think have same potential now.
I recently had a opportunity to buy some good .mobi domains, but then this thought struck my mind.

Let me know what are your thoughts?
regards
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Investing in .mobi was excellent for me -- not as investment but as education. I have dropped 99% of my large portfolio and keep less than 10 (e.g. AutoLoan was sold for $8200 in 2016 but I have not received even one offer!) to constantly remind me the importance of domain extension.
 
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same here, mobi was the reason i didn't put crazy money in gTLDs
Same here too. Exactly why I had the confidence not to touch those 1000+ new extensions when they were launched. Therefore, .mobi was good to me -- great education.
 
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mobi was a speculative bubble and it died and won't come back. No amount of effort will make end users use, let alone pay extra for, an extension they don't want.

Mobi set the standard for hype - they were the first to auction reserved premiums.

Oh by the way, the Dotmobi company became insolvent and was taken over by Afilias - so investing in domains is not just investing in keywords, it is investing in the registry behind the extension.
 
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Let me know what are your thoughts?

Yep, the good old mobi days...I made (and lost) a chunk there...think I ended up in the red overall.That ship has sailed...look for some good .com names instead.
 
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While .mobi domains still have traffic, I see no potential in the extension as a domain investment.

The TLD was a situation not exactly similar to anything else before or after. A consortium of tech companies, in the lead up to smart phones created the widespread expectation that each site would need its regular domain for computer users and a .mobi domain for mobile users. As such, and with projections for big numbers of mobile users, the .mobi would have guaranteed use and high value.

When Apple, and I believe one other, walked away and instead urged responsive web design, the need for .mobi almost immediately evaporated, and domains that had sold for big amounts in the auction mainly resold at much lower prices, or never.

While I understand those who feel it is relevant to new gTLDs (it of course was never part of the new gTLD program) I don't see it that way. No new gTLD can make the claim that you NEED this exact dimension (possibly might argue .app comes close), but rather are only valuable in terms of how the elegance of the name, the value of the keyword and match, and strength of the registry compete with other alternatives.

I suspect that the new gTLD introduction would have been much more successful had .mobi not come along just prior and so many domain investors lost money on .mobi, but really it is different.

Anyway, in short I would never consider a .mobi investment except possibly in the case of a hand-reg fee for a word where .mobi is a logical across the dot combination. Ignore all high priced past sales of .mobi - they were from an era that never came to pass.

Bob
 
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Such threads appear here yearly...
And answer is always the same.
 
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And Afilias usually doesn't spend any money to PROmote their TLDs, except .info (sometimes).
This is another reason - why such results.
 
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