MTLD claims Round 1 win with .mobi

HAVING COME under blistering attack from suppliers such as Bango and InfoGin, MTLD claims it has emerged victorious in the first ten days of therelease of the .mobi domain.

Neil Edwards who is general manager with Mobile Top Level Domain (MTLD) has told Mobile Entertainment that 7,500 registrations had been granted by June 23rd 2006. That takes it well on the way to its target of 15,000 registrations by October.

But registrations have in fact been slowing. Elsewhere MTLD has said that it registered 2,000 domains during the 'Limited Industry Sunrise' in May, while another 5,000 domain names were registered within two days of the regular 'Sunrise' period starting on June 12th.

So it only got a further 500 in just over a week. Most of the names come from the IT sector, mobile companies and content providers. When the INQ tried Ford, GE (the world's Number Two brand according to Millward Brown) and Calvin Klein, they weren't registered yet.

Edwards predicts that most .mobi sites will be up and running between the next six to twelve months. This will be followed by the major search engines indexing .mobi content, he says.

Edwards maintains that MTLD has "done nothing but succeed." Surely the proof of the pudding will come with .mobi sites registering massive page views, though? That will be Round Two. µ