Employee Breakdown of Registrations

• Micro businesses dominate the business mix in Australia

Overview

NetRegistry records the number of employees in customers' businesses during registrations. This information was gathered from over 59, 000 Australian businesses, representing a meaningful sample.

Australian Profile of Employee Breakdown

There has been a steady and significant increase in domain name registration by micro businesses (1-5 employees). With a 21 percent increase on top of consistently strong results, more and more micro businesses are strengthening their online presence.

Domain registrations of small businesses with 6 to 29 employees are consistently growing at a rate of 28 percent. After a slight slump in 2005, businesses with 30 to 99 employees saw a 64 percent increase in registrations in 2006.

This data contrasts significantly with international employee segment results, where 30 percent of domain registrations are attributed to consumers. A consumer in this instance refers to personal or non-business related websites. [August 2006 Verisign Register Profile Study] Under auDA regulations consumers are not permitted to register com.au domain names, unless they have registered an ABN.

Conclusions

The dominance of micro businesses (1 to 5 employees) in the Australian market is reflective of the Australian business segmentation, recorded by ABS. The latest ABSBR Counts of Businesses report (June 2004) by Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded 90 percent of employing businesses had between 0 and 19 employees. Only 9 percent contained 20 to 199 employees and 1 percent had 200 plus employees.

[Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics Business Register, Counts of Businesses ABS Cat. No. 8161.0.55.001, June 2004]

Take up of domain names in Australia is almost entirely weighted towards businesses. Consumers are not attracted to the id.au domain name created for consumers and there is evidentially untapped demand for com.au domains from the consumer audience.