.mobi takes on .com
Published July 11th, 2006
Tech World
While there are over 40 million .com addresses, dotmobi is the new kid on the block
Try accessing a website on your cellphone. Besides the slow connections, chances are that most of the content would not be visible on the small screen. It makes for a very unpleasant experience since most Web pages aren’t designed for cellphones or mobile devices. This is all set to change with a start-up Dublin-based Mobile Top Level Domain (mTLD) accepting registrations – approved by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) – for ‘.mobi’ addresses (similar to .com).
Those who opt for the .mobi addresses will have to revamp their sites to ensure they work on both cellphones and PCs (remember how websites had to optimise their webpages for browsers such as the Internet Explorer, Netscape and now Firefox?), failing which their addresses will be put on hold.
VeriSign states that almost 50 per cent of the 85.6 million domain names registered worldwide in late 2005 were .com addresses. However, around 1.15 billion people (matching the global internet usage numbers – cellphone connections are double that) are expected to be using a mobile Internet phone by 2008, according to T-Mobile, Credit Suisse First Boston and Pyramid Research.
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