Afnic reports 8.2% growth in .fr ccTLD in 2013 with a total of 2,716,027 domain names

At 31 December 2013 the .fr TLD represented 2,716,027 domain names, an increase of 8.2% in 2013. Although this performance remains higher than the average for the world market (7.1 % according to our estimates), it was significantly lower than in 2012.

The .fr TLD is following the global trend towards a market downturn in domain names worldwide, of greater significant this year after several years of significant outperformance.

This outperformance can be seen on the French market where the .fr TLD continues to gain market share, with 36.5% against 36% at year-end 2012. This can be largely explained by the poor performance of the .com name space in France (+5.6 %) in 2013.

The major factors that help to explain these developments are:

• The slowdown in the economy, in the past the correlation between companies founded and domain names filed under the .fr TLD being close to 90%; the slowdown also affects the renewal rate, since registrants are less likely to keep unused names

• Developments in uses (tablets, social media, etc.) that potentially affect the browsing habits of Internet users and their modes of access to content; the impact of these changes could not be accurately determined until now and studies published by other registries even claim that it is marginal.

This month’s issue of the Afnic Industry Report on Domain Names publishes the key figures for the .fr TLD 2013 as follows:

• With 2,716,027 domain names in the .fr namespace at 31 December 2013, the growth of the .fr TLD in 2013 was 8.2%, against 7.1% for the world market average;
• The .fr TLD continued to gain market share on the French market: 36.5% in 2013, against 36% at year-end 2012;
• 412,145 of the domain names under the .fr TLD are located within Paris, or 15.2% of all the domain names in the .fr namespace;