The current number of top-level domains (TLDs) breaks down as follows: 

The TLDs .com (166.6 million) and .net (12.5 million) account for the majority, at 44.6%. This suggests that the second TLD may be mentioned separately simply because the registry for these two TLDs sponsors the quarterly reports. 

37% of all TLDs are country-code top-level domains (“ccTLDs”) such as .cn for China (20.9 million), .de for Germany (18 million), .uk for the United Kingdom (10.5 million), and many others.

A significant share -13.2% - includes the new generic top-level domains (“new gTLDs”), which were first registered in 2013. These include, for example, .xyz (8.5 million), .top (6.5 million), and .shop (4.2 million).

The last and smallest share, at 5.2%, is held by the so-called “legacy gTLDs”—that are the generic top-level domains that were introduced well before 2013. These include .org with 12 million and .info with 5.3 million registered domains and some further TLDs.

.com clearly ranks first in terms of the number of registered domains, followed by .cn and .de, although these account for only 12.55% and 10.8%, respectively, of the total number of .com domains. The gap between them and the leader is enormous and cannot be closed quickly, especially since the growth rates for .com are higher than those for the other two TLDs. It will be interesting to see how these figures develop. 

A second round of new top-level domains is currently being rolled out, so it’s safe to assume that this share will increase. However, ccTLDs enjoy a high level of trust and are not easily displaced.

The “Domain Name Industry Brief,” sponsored by VeriSign Inc., is published four times a year. VeriSign Inc. is the registry for the top-level domains .com, .net, .cc, and .name. Additional figures, as well as information of the methodology used to calculate them, can be viewed directly there.

Source: dnib.com