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The 2018 IDN World Report Findings Show Negative IDN Growth in 2017

1 Oct. 2018

The 2018 IDN World Report findings have been published to idnworldreport.eu.

The major findings from the report are:

  • As at December 2017, 7.5 million IDNswere registered, a drop of 14% since December 2016.  A major factor in the reduction in global IDN numbers was a change of policy by the Vietnam ccTLD, which resulted in a loss of nearly 1 million .vn second level IDNs. Excluding the impact of .vn, the underlying trend is negative growth of -5%, distributed mainly across second level ccTLDs.
  • IDNs comprise 2% of the world’s domains, a percentage that has remained fairly static since at least 2012. The data in this report include IDNs across both ccTLDs and gTLDs, both at the first and second level.
  • Distribution patterns of IDN registrations are different from those of traditional, ASCII domain names.  IDN registrations are highest in Asia and Pacific region.  The script of IDNs registered throughout the world strongly correlate to the languages spoken in different countries and territories.


The major challenge to mass uptake of IDNs continues to be their poor usability:

  • in email,
  • online user identifiers,
  • and even in browsers, applications and devices including Internet of Things.  

“Progress is slow and not enough priority is being afforded to overcome this challenge, despite signs of progress. Urgent action is required by all stakeholders including policy makers, manufacturers and software vendors”, comments Emily Taylor, lead author of the IDN World Report.

Since 2011, the IDN World Report research team, consisting of EURid, UNESCO and Verisign with the support of the regional ccTLD organisations (CENTR, APTLD, LACTLD), examines the language of websites associated with IDNs on a yearly basis.

View the 2018 IDN World Report at idnworldreport.eu.

 

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