Just one day after we reported that 'Dotmobi opens the floodgates for domain registration' here's a reminder to all organisations wishing to protect their brands: trademark holders have until only until the 22nd of August to register a .mobi domain before they become available to the public on 28 August.
Virgin, BMW, eBay and Ferrari are among the first of the 5,000 prominent brands who have already registered their .mobi domain names to secure their trademark during the regular 'Sunrise' registration period.
However, the new .mobi domains on offer will be limited. When registrations open to the general public, around 8,200 premium domain names will not be available. Dotmobi, the sponsoring company for the new domain, have put aside words such as money, gambling, debt, news, mobile, cars, sex, health, and food.
"We do not want to lend these names to speculators" said Alexa Raad, Dotmobi VP of marketing and business development, in a recent interview with the top level domain statistics firm Ipwalk. "We want relevant content behind the domain names, and that is what the selection process will focus on. People should not just sit on these names."
With a huge potential user base and industry backing of .mobi from mobile operators, handset manufacturers, and software developers such as Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, T-Mobile, and Vodafone, the only barrier to searching the web by mobile is content. Accessing internet content from a mobile phone can be a frustrating experience as few websites have been designed with mobile users in mind.
Dotmobi have responded to the need for mobile optimised content by publishing guidelines meant to help with the construction and design of web content for mobile devices.
A condition of buying and running a .mobi domain will be the adoption of basic standards and templates to ensure that the user experience will stay consistent. Dotmobi, a sponsor of the W3C's Mobile Web Initiative, will provide registrants with a set of guidelines called 'Switch On! Guides' based on W3C standards.
"We want to make it easier for regular people," said Raad. "Regardless of what mobile phone you are using to access the Internet, regardless of the application, it should just work and be easy to use."
There are already more digital mobile phones than there are televisions and PCs worldwide. With mobile phone operators moving toward high-speed data networks and manufacturers building more complicated, sophisticated devices the new generic top level domain .mobi has enormous marketing potential. If companies are serious about representing their brands as 'Dotmobi opens the floodgates for domain registration' then .mobi may just meet Raad's vision of an m-commerce world!
