.商城
| Status: | Proposed |
| Language: | Chinese (Hans/Simplified) |
| Translates to: | mall |
| Manager: | Zodiac |
| Registry Provider: | KNET |
| Type: | IDN gTLD |
| Category: | Commerce |
| Priority #: | 47 |
.商城 is an IDN gTLD being proposed in ICANN's New gTLD Program, it translates as "mall" from Hans Chinese. The applicant is Zodiac (Zodiac Capricorn Limited).[1]
Application Details
Excerpted from response to question #18 in TLD application:
"Zodiac Holdings Limited (“Zodiac”) was founded and incorporated in Cayman Islands by James Seng in 2008 in anticipation of the launch of the ICANN new gTLD program. Currently, it is headquartered in Hong Kong and has an operation center in Beijing, China. The team consists of experienced veterans in the global and China domain name industry like James Seng and former China Network Information Center (CNNIC) employees such as Eugene Li.
James Seng is one of the Internet pioneers in Singapore and is widely recognized as an international expert in numerous Internet areas. He is well known as the inventor of IDN and has co-chaired the IDN Working Group in IETF from 1999 to 2004, leading to the standardization of IDN.
Eugene Li, is the former Vice President of China Network Information Center (CNNIC). During his 7 years tenure at CNNIC, Eugene has launched initiatives that doubled domain name registrations and helped CNNIC become the no. 1 ccTLD and no. 2 TLD by volume. At the time when Eugene left to join Zodiac, CNNIC has over 13 million domain name registrations.
Under the vision and leadership of James Seng, with the support of angels, venture capital firm and family offices of approximately USD 20 million in place for the application and operation of the new gTLDs, Zodiac is seeking to become the first and largest privately held ICANN-approved TLD registry operator in Asia. It intends to operate TLDs that are centric to the Chinese culture.
[..]
[.商城], pronounced as “shang cheng” means “mall” in Chinese. To the Chinese Internet community, “STRING” is used to refer to websites that sell branded consumer goods. In particular, Tmall.com (named Taobao “STRING”) is a dedicated B2C platform within Taobao.com (the no. 1 e-commerce platform in China) and features merchants who are either brand owners or authorized distributors. Brands such as P&G, Addidas and Gap also have established flagship stores there."[2]