"We see a trend of consumers registering domain names. In fact, 20 percent of our worldwide registrations last year were from individuals," NSI Asia Pacific managing director Arthur Chang said.
The key target markets are Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Australia and Japan, as these countries have high PC and Internet penetration rates, Chang said in an interview this morning.
So far, NSI has inked bundling agreements with Australia's PC dealer Harris Technology, which is owned by retail chain Coles Myers, he said.
Hong Kong's Internet services provider Hutchison Global Crossing is another partner, Chang added.
When asked if NSI's business in the corporate market was declining, he said: "It is still growing and some companies are even registering more than one domain name (to protect their online branding)."
As of December last year, NSI registered a total of 1.8 million domain names in Asia Pacific (including Japan). "This constitutes about 12 percent of the total registration of 15.1 million domain names worldwide," he said.
In Asia, NSI relies heavily on its 80 channel partners instead of direct sales from its Web site. This is due to strict strict foreign exchange controls in certain countries and overall low usage of credit cards, Chang said.
These partners are largely Internet Service Providers and Web hosting firms, including SingNet, WebVisions, Internet Thailand, Satyam Infoway and DotCom Indonesia, he added.
Going forward, he expects to expand NSI's direct presence in the region beyond its current offices in Hong Kong, Korea and Australia to "better support" the company's marketing and sales initiatives.
The next office will likely be in Singapore, said Chang, who could not provide the timeframe nor investment for expansion.
A subsidiary of Nasdaq-listed security solutions provider Verisign Inc, NSI has been the provider of .com, .net and .org domain names registration services since 1993.
Play video
There are currently no comments for this post.