The .asia sTLD is going through the classic downturn that always affects new TLDs just after the anniversary of their landrush. This Junk Dump phase (when domains that could not be flipped or monetised are dropped when renewal time comes up) generally results in a lot of highly speculative domains being dropped. The problem for .asia sTLD is that it doens't have a sustained high volume of new registrations. The .mobi TLD by comparison, had a sustained new registration volume right through its Junk Dump phase.
The problem for .asia is partially timing and partially lack of demand. It launched at the end of the domain bubble. Most of the new TLDs launched in the last five years or so have been fundamentally driven by massive domain speculation. The .eu was effectively ruined because it killed off any natural domain development. The .mobi TLD was also driven by speculation but it had launched earlier in the bubble so it was better placed to profit. However it is also a device specific TLD which means that it has other effects at play. The .asia launched at the end of the domain bubble and it was hit by the global recession. After the initial spike of the landrush, the volume of new domain registrations fell off and show an almost exponential decay. There is no single identity for the .asia sTLD in the way that there is a political identity for .eu (.eu is the "ccTLD" for the European Union). It also has major competition from some very large ccTLDs in that area - .cn, kr, .jp, .au, .nz, .in and companies launching into regional markets (the .asia is really a regional TLD) tend to target specific markets by registering their brand, where possible, in the target country's ccTLD. Without massive domain speculation, the .asia sTLD has had to rely on brand protection registrations and enduser registrations. The endusers are the critical section of any market as they are the ones that develop websites and build the ecommerce infrastructure in a TLD. If a TLD does not have a sufficient level endusers developing websites, a TLD will collapse. The net increase (domain count) for .asia between 01/September/2009 and 01/October/2009 was 947 domains. Each month it has approximately 3K new registrations but that's more like the pattern for a small to medium ccTLD.
Regards...jmcc