Afilias Limited, an Irish Limited company, and the registry operator for .INFO, announced today that it acquired all of the issued and outstanding capital stock of mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd. (known publicly as dotMobi) the registry which owns the .Mobi TLD, and plans to continue operating dotMobi as a wholly owned subsidiary.
“Afilias has long been a leader in launching new TLDs and now supports over 50 percent of the entire universe of registrations in TLDs launched since 2001,” said Hal Lubsen, CEO of Afilias. “Our acquisition of dotMobi reflects our long term commitment to the success of the TLDs we support and the communities they serve. We are particularly proud of the global success of the .mobi domain, and look forward to working with the dotMobi team and the mobile community to build on this solid base.”
Afilias and dotMobi have worked closely together since the Mobi JV (predecessor to dotMobi) was started by Nokia, Vodafone and Microsoft to apply to ICANN for the .mobi TLD in 2004. Upon approval, Afilias provided registry services in support of the successful launch in 2006, and today there are nearly one million .mobi registrations. Now more established, dotMobi will benefit from the increased focus that a seasoned registry expert like Afilias will provide.
“The mobile Web continues to evolve and expand, and Afilias’ strategic domain expertise combined with mobile industry support will be a powerful accelerant for .mobi growth,” said Trey Harvin, CEO of dotMobi. “Afilias’ strategies for growing top-level domains have directly resulted in several of the world’s largest domains, and we are excited to work closely with Afilias’ management to achieve dotMobi’s full potential.”
“With its excellent registry and DNS support, Afilias has been a close partner since the beginning,” said Jerry Easom, Chairman of the Board of dotMobi. “This partnership, coupled with the success of dotMobi in furthering acceptance of the mobile web, makes moving the ownership of dotMobi to Afilias a natural progression. dotMobi founders, who include some of the largest companies in the mobile space, are looking forward to supporting dotMobi and the .mobi domain with involvement in both the MAG (.mobi Advisory Group) and the PAB (dotMobi Policy Advisory Board).”
Afilias provides registry and DNS services for more than 15 million domains, including more than 950,000 .mobi domains registered worldwide. In addition, Afilias supports .INFO, .ORG, .aero, .ASIA, .AG (Antigua and Barbuda), .BZ (Belize), .GI (Gibraltar), .HN (Honduras), .IN (India), .LC (St. Lucia), .ME (Montenegro), .MN (Mongolia), .SC (the Seychelles), .VC (St. Vincent and the Grenadines).”””
Do you think this gives .mobi any hope? I feel like most Domainers gave-up on this TLD years ago…
I never really gave up on .Mobi. I never pursued it as aggressively as other TLD’s, but I think that with the growing popularity of smartphones and mobile web surfing .Mobi has a place.
Afilias has done a great job with the .info TLD and hopefully they can continue that with .Mobi.
MikeZ
Unless each .mobi ownership is automatically paired with each .com ownership, there is no integrity in using a .mobi.
You need to separate out the business of running the registry, from being a registrant of a domain.
I will be talking about this at Domainer MardiGras Tomorrow if you aren’t snowed in.
They are completely different business models and you cannot mix the two
“… the global success of the .mobi domain… ,” “Now more established … ,” “… achieve dotMobi’s full potential.”
Oh please.
The only reason they sold out was because; in spite of throwing who knows how much money at this thing (they’ll never say); this extension is an abject failure.
And I ask again: Just how many regs have they canceled due to non-mobile use like they promised (threatened) they would when they launched this thing? Any?
Up next: 99 cent registrations.
For info, they revealed last year that there was no longer a requirement for mobi domains to have mobile content… so what are they for and why would anyone use them? So clearly the domain was a failure since it was introduced solely to guarantee a way to find mobile content.
The company reported a huge loss for 2007-2008, and cut a lot of staff in 2009, and filed for a six month extension on submitting their 2008-2009 financials. They would have been published at the end of this month.
All Afilias have to do is a bookkeeping operation to turn a profit, they can sell off all the company’s assets and let the staff go if they want.