Number of new registrations market-wide increases 13% in first quarter 2002 – Tucows’ registration transactions increase 17.6%
Toronto, Canada, May 01, 2002 — Tucows Inc. (Tucows) (OTCBB: TCOW), a leading provider of Internet services to ISPs and Web hosting companies worldwide, today announced that the Company sees a strengthening domain name market based on industry data for the first quarter of 2002.
New registrations for the domain name market in the first quarter increased 13% to 2.6 million from 2.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2001. Market renewals and extensions increased by 22%. The market renewal rate for the first quarter remained healthy at approximately 52%.
Tucows reported a record number of domain name registrations, renewals and transfers-in for the first quarter of 2002 of approximately 893,000, an increase of 17.6% from the previous quarter. Total active domain names under management at the end of the first quarter increased to more than 3.7 million.
“We are very encouraged by the strength of the domain name registration market in the first quarter of the year,” said Elliot Noss, president and chief executive officer, Tucows Inc. “We believe that the domain
name market is entering a new phase of its evolution – one characterized by quality customers and sustained growth. As the SnapNames data shows, shrinkage in the .COM, .NET, and .ORG zone file over the past six months is primarily the result of the purging of promotional and speculative names by VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) and Register.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: RCOM). Excluding VeriSign and Register.com, active domain names under management for the market increased by 12.7% over the past six months.”
*Domains under management
Datasource: SnapNames State of the Domain (SOTD) reports: Oct-01 toMar-02
“As Internet usage continues to grow dramatically, we are confident that the domain name market will expand right along with it, driven by the need for businesses, organizations, and individuals to have a presence on the Web,” continued Mr. Noss.
Tucows Captures Number Two Market Share Position
Tucows also announced that, as of the end of March 2002, it had captured the number two market share position as reported in the latest edition of SnapNames’ State of the Domain report. Tucows ranked ahead of Register.com, Inc., and was second only to the former monopoly, VeriSign, Inc. “We believe that our strong performance is proof of both the exceptional value of our offering and our commitment to the highest levels of customer service and support,” said Mr. Noss. “It again demonstrates that ourcustomers – ISPs and Web hosting companies – are the businesses that truly sell domain names.”
About Tucows
Tucows Inc. is a leading provider of Internet services to ISPs and Web hosting companies worldwide. An ICANN-accredited registrar, Tucows provides outsourced domain name registrations for generic and country code top-level domains (TLDs), plus web certificates. Tucows also distributes software and other digital content through its integrated network of resellers. Tucows offers more than 30,000 software titles in libraries located around the world and operates search and reference media sites including eLibrary, Encyclopedia.com, and NewsDirectory.com. For more information, please visit: https://www.tucows.com.
Contact:
Joanna Becket
Tucows Inc.
416-538-5451
jbecket@tucows.com