Tuesday, December 11, 2007

PRNewswire: Third .mobi 'Premium Domain Name' Online Auction Shatters Existing Price Records — Cormac @ 09:41 

DUBLIN, Ireland and WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- dotMobi, the company behind the .mobi Internet domain for mobile phones, closed its 2007 online auction series on December 5 with a record-breaking auction that generated approximately $2.3 million for the continued creation of mobile content tools like dotMobi's popular http://ready.mobi/ and http://site.mobi/ tools and its forthcoming device database.

In this auction, dotMobi made 100 domain names available through Sedo.com; 95 of those 100 names were sold, including music.mobi for $616,000 and games.mobi for $401,500 - both surpassing former "price leader" flowers.mobi, which sold for $200,000 in 2006.

With bidders from more than 25 countries, the auction's most desired names, aside from music.mobi and games.mobi, were sports.mobi (sold for $101,000), movies.mobi ($82,000), juegos.mobi ($61,000), game.mobi ($61,000), videos.mobi ($51,000), sport.mobi ($51,000) and photos.mobi ($51,000).

"I'm pleased -- but not entirely surprised -- that the .mobi domains in this auction did so well," said Trey Harvin, dotMobi's CEO. "Games and music are becoming two of the 'killer apps' for the mobile web. Content providers know it's important that their customers can find content at sites that are guaranteed to work on the billions of web-enabled mobile phones around the world, which is the promise of sites built on the .mobi domain."

"In the coming year, we will release names that will be ideal for business verticals like the travel, entertainment and adult industries. The excitement around the mobile possibilities for those industries is sure to generate strong interest," Harvin said.

Tim Schumacher, CEO of Sedo, said, "This auction proved to be so popular that Sedo experienced a rare event: traffic load issues. In accordance with our terms and conditions, we extended the auction for an additional three hours to ensure everyone had a fair chance to place bids. This auction again shows that the .mobi domain has engaged everyone's interest in the possibilities of the mobile web."

The dotMobi "Premium Domain Name" list is a set of more than 5,000 commonly used words that dotMobi set aside during its formation. dotMobi is the first domain company to offer selected names directly to the market via an auction process rather than a traditional "first come, first served" process.

Source: PRNewswire