COLLAPSE OF the MOBI & IDN MARKETS -- the aftermath

[Gerry]

Here is the title of your thread -

COLLAPSE OF the MOBI & IDN MARKETS -- the aftermath

On one side of this you have incorrectly claimed a collapse of one market while claiming a collapse of one market that hasn't even gotten started yet.

So, are these predictions of events to come?

Or reflections of, once more with clarity - bad choices on your part?

 

[Rubber Duck]

Actually, there is a difference between pure speculation and investing. But if you want to say that riskless profits are impossible in a well-functioning market, I agree.

Yep, one involves using your own initiative to make your calls, and the other involves digesting the prospectus of some bloody sucking sales person.

 

[dn-101]

So, are these predictions of events to come?

Or reflections of, once more with clarity - bad choices on your part?

If you watch LOST you know that Time is not linear :smilewinkgrin:

 

[dodo1]

Riskless profits impossible?

So a reg fee domain (8 bucks) turned into 5 thousand bucks ($5000.00) - where does that fall into your philosophy of "riskless profits are impossible"?

With hindsight riskless profits are possible, of course. But if you invest $8 that's a risky investment already, so there is no guarantee you will make a profit. If I say there are no riskless investments, that should make it more clear.

Investing is still different from speculation, though. Speculators seek high-variance investments for maximum "possible" returns or try to play on temporary market inefficiencies. Traditional investors focus on minimizing their risk for high "expected" long-term profits.

There are currently around 1,200 quality (generic, single word, regged 3 years or more ago, etc.) idns being offered on several idn forums in the range of $1 to $20

I doubt that those are really "quality" or premium domains. Being based in Germany, I can say that German IDNs have become quite valuable and are bought by end users. Granted, there are different regional markets for IDNs, depending on the language, but true quality domains will always find a buyer if the price is fair.

 

[katherine]

Doc, you like to tell us how we domainers have no influence over the consumers. You are right. Now consider this: .mobi is dissed by professional developers and guess what, they won't prescribe .mobi for their clients. Developers & SEOers are more influential than we are.
.mobi is respected almost as much as .biz. IMO the stigma will not wear off. Get over it :smilewinkgrin:

IDN is a different story, it is a tentative solution to a problem that exists.

Oh well no pain, no pain :-#:

 

[DomainsInc]

Doc, you like to tell us how we domainers have no influence over the consumers. You are right. Now consider this: .mobi is dissed by professional developers and guess what, they won't prescribe .mobi for their clients. Developers & SEOers are more influential than we are.
.mobi is respected almost as much as .biz. IMO the stigma will not wear off. Get over it :smilewinkgrin:

IDN is a different story, it is a tentative solution to a problem that exists.

Oh well no pain, no pain :-#:

Its dissed by developers because they don't know how to make sites for it. Not that its useless. I think there will be a market for certain niches with .mobi. I don't see how you can compare it to .biz. Thats just an alternate to .com, at least mobi means something.

 

[Gerry]

Now consider this: .mobi is dissed by professional developers and guess what, they won't prescribe .mobi for their clients.

That is their lose. And their ignorance.

They are doing their clients a huge dis-service by not presenting to them the options.

As one noted blogger, self proclaimed seo expert, and wireless industry leader found out - yeah, she's still feeling the sting over that one. Went as far as to proclaim (on camera at a conference) that the mobile internet did not exist and that the term wireless was being over used.

I could care less if professional developers diss mobi. As well as domainers.

I am still waiting to see how many of these "professional developers" sit on the boards of Fortune 50, 100, and 500 companies. Honestly, these are points every one needs to raise with folks like Volvo, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Disney, and so on.

Here's a real kick in the crotch for many of you...did you know that the likes of BMW and Volvo are kicking off their new vehicle model campaigns on their dot mobi sites? Why? Because they get it - they get the idea that their audience and the audience they are trying to reach are most likely than anything else apt to have their mobile device with them. Where ever they go, that little device is with them 24/7. Now, with international compainies like that (and countless others) what one extension more than any other says mobile to ALL of their internation clients, customers, and audience. Do you think m.bmw.com is going to do it? Oops, forgot...we'll have to include m.bmw.cn, m.bmw.jp, m.bmw.es, m.bmw.de...and the rest.

Or just go with .mobi.

What, the devices auto detect now? The iphone and ipod touch have made .mobi obsolete? Bravo. I applaud you. And, as my seo expert and "professional programmer", I am also going to fire your ass for going after only 17% of the mobile market and ignoring the other 83%. And for good measure, I would also fire your ass for not keeping up with the news and trends that indicate most iphone/ipod users do not find having to find a piece of a tidbit of news on a full blown PC site. And, I'll fire your ass for trying to convince me I should not do mobi because, trust you, one day ALL mobile devices will auto detect and one day all mobile devices will be as responsive as the iphone - which means that of the current 4.5 billion phones in use, I have to wait until 70% of those upgrade to a smartphone capable of connecting to the internet. And, for kickers, you are fired for telling me that in order to reach all my global customers, I am going to have to pay you to make an m.bmw.tld for all current 260+ extensions currently in use and be prepared to shell out untold thousands for you to make a site for all the future tld's.

Or we could just have accomplished all of this by choosing .mobi.

You can call your self a professional developer and an seo expert. That does not mean you are up on the latest and new technology. Just because you don't like it does NOT mean it does not work and work well. So well in fact - that it works FLAWLESSLY on ALL PC's, Laptops, Netbooks, Smartphones in existance NOW, TODAY, and TOMORROW.

If I recieved my credentials and certification in 1992 and I am content to do no further studying, education, reading of journals, attending trade shows and seminars - sure, I can call myself a professional. That doesn't mean I know squat about what is being used today. And would likely lose my credentials for recommending a medication in use then but outlawed today.

Peace out.

Going to learn to bake a pan of cornbread.

 

[kbm]

Prices for mobi names are up since there will be more growth in the cell phone market and companies will try to provide more niche market features to cell phone users.

In short, more content via cell phones than before.

 

[Gerry]

Its dissed by developers because they don't know how to make sites for it. Not that its useless. I think there will be a market for certain niches with .mobi. I don't see how you can compare it to .biz. Thats just an alternate to .com, at least mobi means something.

Not to mention that you are lying to your customer by telling them no one uses it and you can't make any money on it.

 

[dn-101]

Easy, guys!
We're all on the same side. Almost.
There is no need for animosity, is there? :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Domainate.com]

The problem with .mobi is it had a window to take off in the mainstream, a window that either has closed or is pretty much closing with technology on mobile devices improving. No one ever wanted a mobile internet, they wanted the internet as they know it on their mobile device, a demand which technology is striving to meet and doing a pretty good job of it. People who say it's best to have a mobile version that's streamlined to load quicker ignore the fact that networks are always constantly improving and the difference in load times will be negligible if not already.

IDNs on the other hand represent a large chunk of the world that doesn't use the Roman alphabet. The people that make money in IDNs are the ones that know what they're doing, know what the names they get mean, know their markets, etc. The ones that fail miserably with IDNs are the ones that toss an umlauted e in a dictionary word .com and think that's what people are looking for, or they take someone's word for it that some IDN name means real estate in Chinese when it really means "you lose, good day sir!".

I'm not versed at all in IDNs and as such have maybe passed up some great investment opportunities because they're simply not for me. I would never dog the IDN market simply because *I* don't know how to deal in it properly. Likewise, I do try to give .mobi enthusiasts the benefit of the doubt, but I just think it's not a strong long term investment anymore. Yes, you can buy to quick flip and some .mobi enthusiasts might be making money in that, but you can do that in any extension however popular they are. I was quickflipping poker, casino, business, etc. in extensions most of you have never heard of. Some of those extensions (which were all ccTLDs of course) are pretty much complete failures, but it didn't mean there was no opportunity in them. The whole point of domaining is to not only find the markets you WANT to work in, but find the markets with the lowest competition to opportunity ratio. I myself pick .org which I both like as an extension and believe is largely underrated and pigeonholed as simply for charities. It's more solid of an extension than the newcomers so I don't have to wonder whether the fire will die down next month or year on them like with a .mobi or a .me. It's boded well for me so far, but like IDNs it's not for everyone and certainly not for someone who doesn't know what they're doing, know the market, etc.

People can disagree and neither can be wrong because their own successes/failures are their basis...wot on NP (not sure who he is on here) sells .co.in names pretty well. I have the highest ever public .in sale. He'll constantly give his opinion that .co.in is better to deal in while I'm adamant that .in is better to deal in. Neither of us is necessarily wrong.

 

[mattbodis]

Very well said Steve.

 

[Gerry]

The problem with .mobi is it had a window to take off in the mainstream, a window that either has closed or is pretty much closing with technology on mobile devices improving. No one ever wanted a mobile internet, they wanted the internet as they know it on their mobile device, a demand which technology is striving to meet and doing a pretty good job of it. People who say it's best to have a mobile version that's streamlined to load quicker ignore the fact that networks are always constantly improving and the difference in load times will be negligible if not already

A couple of points here.

First, regarding the No one ever wanted a mobile internet, do you have kids? Tweens? Twenty somethings? Do you want to tell them they are wrong and shouldn't use that new fangled internet thingy?

As for the technology catching up, that is a good point but, again, the technology is lagging behind the demand and usage and is playing catch up because no one ever imagined it would be here this quick and as strong as it is.

Again, do you tell someone not to use something, don't visit that site, because in a year or 6 months from now you will like it better??? Nonsense. Consumers today are into instant gratification and access.

First you say no one wanted the mobile internet. Then you say the companies are doing their best to catch up to the usage and demand.

Sorry. That one paragraph is so conflicted and contradictary within itself.

You are going to have a tough time convincing the smartphone manufactures to stop making their product, wait until technology can catch up with them, and to go back to making PC's and laptops. Just today I found out that Dell is buying some smartphone company at the tune of nearly 4 billion. Now, should Dell put off that sale and wait several more years before getting into the smartphone business? I hope your answer is yes. Perhaps they will reconsider closing their PC plant here which they just announced last Monday due to, what else - a PC market that is no longer there.

Domainers do not control the internet. They just wish they did.

And it should become increasingly clearer now that domainers to not control consumer activity and how consumers connect to the internet. They just with they did.

 

[MobileDesigner]

Moot point as usual.
M-commerce was in the news well before .mobi was even released.
No mention of .mobi in the article, as usual.
papajohns.mobi redirects to http://mobile.papajohns.com.
End of the story.

IDNs are being used on mobile official menus as well as .mobis here in Japan.
From what i see with my very own eyes is WELL enough to prove those who speculate that IDNs and .mobi will not be worth the investment.

.mobi is only to assist the users to come in. users are being sent to http://mobile.papajohns.com perhaps because of their database and their structure?

As for me, i still input a .mobi in my mobile phone's browser cause if i were to get a large page, then my mobile phone browser either crashes or it automatically goes to my fullbrowser function which costs me additional money.

if the domain is much too long, id rather search it via mobile search engine and add "mobile site" or "モバイルサイト" then would get their mobile site

 

[dodo1]

First, regarding the No one ever wanted a mobile internet, do you have kids? Tweens? Twenty somethings? Do you want to tell them they are wrong and shouldn't use that new fangled internet thingy?

(...)

First you say no one wanted the mobile internet. Then you say the companies are doing their best to catch up to the usage and demand.

You should re-read what Steve wrote and look more closely at the second half of the sentence you quoted:

No one ever wanted a mobile internet, they wanted the internet as they know it on their mobile device, a demand which technology is striving to meet and doing a pretty good job of it.

It is true that nobody wants a mobile Internet: Everybody wants to have mobile access to just the same version of the Internet he or she knows from their personal computers at home. That's a difference. For that you do not need an extra extension. The contrary is the case, because people want to visit YouTube.com, GMail.com etc. They don't want to be told to use another extension (which is even one letter longer!) only because they're using a mobile device. DotCom has won long ago. The introduction of .mobi did not change anything; consumers will continue to go to .com websites. It is now up to technology to take care of the rest by forwarding the consumer to the mobile website when he is on a mobile device and to the full website when he is at the office, for example. As has been said above, technology is advancing fast. It is even possible that we will be able to efficiently use full websites on smartphones without having to settle for ugly mobile versions of those sites in the future.

 

[Domainate.com]

You should re-read what Steve wrote and look more closely at the second half of the sentence you quoted:


It is true that nobody wants a mobile Internet: Everybody wants to have mobile access to just the same version of the Internet he or she knows from their personal computers at home. That's a difference. For that you do not need an extra extension. The contrary is the case, because people want to visit YouTube.com, GMail.com etc. They don't want to be told to use another extension (which is even one letter longer!) only because they're using a mobile device. DotCom has won long ago. The introduction of .mobi did not change anything; consumers will continue to go to .com websites. It is now up to technology to take care of the rest by forwarding the consumer to the mobile website when he is on a mobile device and to the full website when he is at the office, for example. As has been said above, technology is advancing fast. It is even possible that we will be able to efficiently use full websites on smartphones without having to settle for ugly mobile versions of those sites in the future.

You answered his post with pretty much what I was going to, though let me hit another point:

"Again, do you tell someone not to use something, don't visit that site, because in a year or 6 months from now you will like it better??? Nonsense. Consumers today are into instant gratification and access."

From that quote and other lines in your post, you pretty much agree that the clock is ticking as far as mobiles being able to render internet as it is on laptops/desktops. So is it your assertion that .mobi is a solid longterm investment because sometime between now and when the majority of handhelds can render the internet as it is on laptops/desktops (i.e. there being simply an internet vs. a regular internet and mobile internet), .mobi will managed to get widely adopted despite it having been 3 years already and not having done so?

That's what I'm trying to understand. Once that point comes, there won't be any need for a "mobile" extension because people will go to Facebook.com, Yahoo.com etc. and there will be no need for a separate mobile version of the site to load. 3 years have gone by and while .mobi had a high speculation period and a few adoptions of it by some companies, it's also had a huge drop back to earth along with the rest of domainland with the economy hitting - no wide adoption, no automatic assumed .mobi on entering a domain, no ".mobi" button...no evidence to me that it will be widely adopted in the mainstream before the opportunity is up. Maybe you can enlighten us?

You had completely misconstrued what I said. Of course people are using the internet on their mobiles. But people want to use the same internet on their mobiles that they use on their home computers. THAT is the demand that technology is trying to fill and will within maybe just a couple years. I'm sure in some of the Eastern countries with the higher end mobile technology, they're probably close if not already at that stage.

I tend to agree with the notion that it could have been a great extension had it started years earlier and been more of a pioneering force in mobile technology. Instead, it's flown AGAINST the current of mobile technology, trying to keep alive the notion of a necessary "mobile internet" vs. what technology is moving towards - the internet experience we all know and love on our desktops/laptops but also with us wherever we go in the palm of our hand.

 

[bwhhisc]

No shooting yet....at least not until you point us to that $10 IDN gold mine. lol :smilewinkgrin:

I'm still WAITING for the Top Tier (ie. A list) stuff....that was the OP claim.

By the way....idn.idn application goes LIVE in the DNS root in 33 days.

http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/idn-cctld-implementation-plan-30sep09-en.pdf

Only took ICANN, GAC, GNSO etc 12 years for planning and implementation. :asleep:

There are currently around 1,200 quality (generic, single word, regged 3 years or more ago, etc.) idns being offered on several idn forums in the range of $1 to $20

We were talking top tier sales....guess you didn't notice this one IDN sold for $700 yesterday at the main IDN forum (seller kenne*).
Hey, wait....these IDN.com are only supposed to sell for $10- $20 bucks. lol
文件.com files.com

*pm me if anyone wants the link/proof, I don't think the MODs allow posted links to other forums here.

 

[MobileDesigner]

Flash Lite (mobile flash) has been around in Japan since 2003. Not until recently has flash lite been able to be pre-installed on western mobile phones.

Now in 2009, Flash lite 1.1 is pre-installed on about 98% of Japanese mobile devices. This took 6 years to happen. As for western mobile devices, not all mobile devices have flash lite pre-installed. How much more time will this take?

As for iPhone and flash, this took a lot of time. what 4-5 years?

From my 7 years working in the mobile industry, to make all mobile devices able to access would take a long time.

Regular websites CAN be viewed on mobile phones here in Japan but it costs extra as so much is involved with brining desktop internet to the mobile phones. Why pay extra for this when we can view mobile websites for a small monthly fee as much as we can see?

9.3% of mobile users use the "full browser" in Japan, while there are 14,500,000 mobile phone users in Japan. If you can do the math, there are a lot of mobile site users. we MAY say that a little more than 800,000 are accessing pc sites using their mobile phones. Even just half of this number is enough. That is a lot of money which the carriers love. .mobi was created to help the users save money and end such user-stealing strategies that the mobile carriers are doing.

http://forum.mobiledesign.com/showthread.php?p=28#post28

Yes, you are right that we all want to access mobile websites of what we can see on the pc, but it costs a lot of money which is charged to the end-user. how long will it take for free desktop internet to be viewed on mobile devices where it is free for the user!? remember it took 6 years for Japan (the centermost point of the mobile industry) to get all mobile devices to view flash lite.... just flash lite!

Until then, we cannot confuse the end-user. we must make it easy for them. Yes, large companies HAVE THE knowledge and the labor to ensure the mobile user gets to the mobile version of the company's pc website, but NOT ALL companies have that luxury. That is where the .mobi domain comes in. AND UNTIL EVERYTHING BECOMES CLEAR for the end-user, .mobi should be used. It makes things more clear.

.com is the best and in no way is .mobi trying to takeover the .coms for mobile website access, but that is all that we have at this time. When the end-user adapts to this .mobi, it could go either way, .com or remain as .mobi. I have yet to see a mobile phone ad that states:

"This mobile phone can view all pc sites for free"​

Until that ad is publicly advertised, .mobi will remain.

Now simply using php to redirect iPhone, android, mobile phones and mobile phones that can view flash lite only takes 2 files. It can be done. But how many companies know how to do this? and when you place the list of mobile devices in one of the files for the file to redirect, how many devices do you put? There are panasonic, Hitachi, and Sharp phones in Japan with hundred of different models. Does anyone know this? If not, those users will end up paying more than they anticipated by accessing a .com site.

SO....... do tell us the best way to simplify this. Please make a simple solution for ALL COMPANIES that would like to make a mobile site.


Do you have a simple answer?

 

[carlton]

This thread is a replay of the same old debate, and illustrates tunnel vision black and white thinking. A tld's "success" is measured on more than one criterion and occurs along a continuum. Collapse would be an inaccurate term to describe these tld's, and reflects on the original poster's bias ... which he presents as fact.

There are sufficient registrations and developed sites that the tld's have a base. If that base of developers & users continues to grow over time (as opposed to shrink), then the tld becomes increasingly relevant.

Most naysayers engage in black & white thinking because it meets their self-serving view or eases the pain of their own bad investments. Forecasting a tld's death seems to be a fun pastime for them.

I''ve been hearing this about biz/us/info for 5 years while the tld's continue to establish a stronger base every day, solid registrations, more developed sites and indexed pages.

 

[dn-101]

We were talking top tier sales....guess you didn't notice this one IDN sold for $700 yesterday at the main IDN forum (seller kenne*).
Hey, wait....these IDN.com are only supposed to sell for $10- $20 bucks. lol
文件.com files.com

Well well, our idn spokesman piped about idn pricing. Isn't that funny?
We heard about the scheme to fool the market into believing that a $2 mil idn portfolio changed hands. DNJ was approached to publish the 'transaction', which never happened. DNJ gave them a finger and told them to go fly a kite.

Currently that 'portfolio' is sitting in John B's IOLLA account, shielding the Russian mafia connection.

oh yes, and on the mobi front - Andre brokered a multimillion dollar transaction where he fooled a young Arab prince but good.