I have to agree somewhat with Macke but mostly disagree at the same time. I disagree only because the facts prove him wrong. .COM's account for 50% of all TLD domain registrations worldwide. He is 100% right when he mentions ccTLD's being king in their countries and that is where I agree with him.
Germany has the most domains registered under its TLD and only has about 20% of the registrations that .COM has. From a business standpoint, take the TLD and look at its marketing potential by the number of businesses in its space. ccTLD's are limited to the business population for that country. .COM's cater to a much broader business population worldwide, albeit not in some countries, but definitely a larger market. I'm in the US and .US hasn't been available to the public for nearly as long as .COM has and if you ask the average American, they think .COM is for the US
So, .US hasn't done a good job of sticking over here.
Here are some interesting facts...
There are 76.9 million domains registered worldwide.
Of those, here are some highlights of the TLD's...
38.2 million .COM's
8.0 million .DE's (Germany)
5.9 million .NET's
4.2 million .UK's (United Kingdom)
3.6 million .ORG's
3.6 million .INFO's (only because of the cheap registrations a few months ago)
1.2 million .BIZ's
.9 million .US's
The United States holds the largest number of domains with Germany and the UK respectively holding close in 2nd and 3rd. There is a large gap to 4th which is Canada, then 5th being South Korea, 6th France, 7th Netherlands, 8th Japan, 9th Australia and 10th China.
The population of the US is 296 million.
The population of Europe is 726 million.
Now think about this. Someone in Germany registers a .DE, but technically, it is primarily geared towards Germans. Every ccTLD domain owner in Europe is going to want .EU when it launches next year. US companies that operate .COM's, but market globally are going to want .EU's too. I BELIEVE THAT .EU WILL BE THE SECOND MOST REGISTERED TLD!!!! My above facts are easily found on the Internet and they 100% support .EU being a dominant force.
In my opinion, .COM will ALWAYS be #1 unless a major marketing effort is done for another TLD and the Global 2000 companies start using it in all of their print and advertising campaigns. Unless this happens, there will not be another TLD to surpass it. .EU in my opinion will be #2 quickly by either the end of next year or sometime in 2007.
Now, I do think that if they opened up .INT, that it would become a dominant TLD in the top 3. For those of you that aren't familiar with .INT, it is what the United Nations and WIPO use and it is for International.
I am interested on what Macke thinks will become of .EU since he lives in Europe. I haven't gotten to hear a European's take on the .EU extension.
And, what does everyone else think of .EU?