That’s right. According to the latest stats from China’s registry, roughly one million .cn domains were registered between September 1 and October 1.
That brings the grand total to 7.1 million .cn domains that have been registered thus far, and counting.
As country code (ccTLD) registrations go, Germany is number one, with 11.1 million .de registrations. China is number two, but not for much longer. I had conservatively estimated that China would surpass Germany by 2010.
But now it looks like China will be number one in 2008.
What explains this sudden explosion in domain name registrations? A lot of factors have come into play — from foreign companies launching local Web sites (and protecting brand names) to the fact that .cn registration fees were recently made more affordable to small businesses and individuals within China.
If you want a list of the top 10 ccTLDs, check out our brand new Country Codes of the World map.
