Proportion of Internet users, website and native language speakers / Analysysy Mason paper

Report from a new study by Analysys Mason, commissioned by the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (UASG), says there is a potential USD $9.8 billion growth opportunity in online revenue through a routine update to Internet systems, including those for speakers of languages that do not use the English script. “The Domain Name System (DNS) has expanded dramatically and now includes more than 1,200 gTLDs. Many of those top-level domains are longer than the legacy three-character domain name (e.g. .com, .edu and .org) or are in non-Latin based scripts (such as Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic). ... [A]lthough many online systems do not recognize these domain names as valid. For example, problems may arise when a user enters a domain name or related email address into an online form on a website and it is rejected. When this happens, it not only frustrates the user and reduces the opportunities for the organization to win a new customer, but it also lessens the cultural, social and economic benefits made possible by the Internet.”

— Ram Mohan, Chair of UASG: “To excel in the long run, organizations should seize the opportunity—and responsibility—to ensure that their systems work with the common infrastructure of the Internet—the domain name system. Universal Acceptance unlocks a significant economic opportunity and provides a gateway to the next billion Internet users by ensuring a consistent and positive experience for Internet users globally. Additionally, governments and NGOs will be better able to serve their citizens and constituencies if they adopt Universal Acceptance.”

— Research estimates that support for Internationalized Domain Names could bring 17 million new users online. These include users whose lack of local language services was previously a barrier to a complete online experience. “The report’s estimate is based on the examination of just five major languages and language groups that would benefit from IDNs because they use non-Latin scripts (Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Vietnamese and Indic language groups) and the proportion of non-Internet users for whom a lack of local language services is a barrier. The research shows that online spending from these new IDN users could start at USD 6.2 billion per year.”

— Potential increased revenues from existing gTLD users: “According to one study, 13 percent of websites reject new domain names with more than three letters—when a simple update of these websites (effectively a “bug fix”) could increase online revenues by USD 3.6 billion per year as a result of Universal Acceptance.”

— Andrew Kloeden, Principal at Analysys Mason: “Our analysis shows that the main impediment to Universal Acceptance is a lack of awareness of the issue, rather than any technical challenges. This is not a heavy lift. The efforts required by software and application owners to implement UA are not particularly onerous; in fact most companies treat UA issues simply as ‘bug fixes.’”