According to itproportal.com,  the new .UK extension has surpassed 50,000 domain registrations in the first 24 hours following its launch.

Nominet, the UK domain name registry, expects 10 million domain name registrations and why not?

There are over 10 million existing domain holders with a .co.uk or one of the other variations that will have first crack at getting the shorter address and with prices set below a .com, £3.50 for a single year (about $5 and £2.50 per year About $4 for multiple year registrations) we would assume everyone who had the right to register a .UK address will do so.

According to the story,  Nominet the company that runs the .UK registry celebrated the release by unveiling the world’s largest welcome sign reading ‘welcometothe.uk’ at London’s Heathrow Airport

As for the registry or the author of the story comparing .UK to new gTLD’s I think its pretty unfair as .UK is a ccTLD not a gTLD and has an existing customer base of over 10 million and many years in existence.

Here is the quote from the story on that and remember .London is still in Sunrise and hasn’t even launched:

“Its registrations have outpaced the likes of .london, .guru and .xyz in the current batch of gTLDs thus meaning its first day is one of the fastest on record in the domain name suffix market.

Actually .XYZ is now over 100,000 registrations if you want to get technical about it and if anyone was going to compare .UK to a new gTLD they should have chosen .Berlin which has actually launched.