Dot.mobi Names Sold For 6 Figures

The latest Moniker domain auction was held last week, and along with the usual multi-million dollar domain buys that we’ve come to expect from these domain auctions, another domain many people might not have heard of, let alone used saw six figure sales. Dot.mobi domains we released for sale in September 2006 and are aimed at providing mobile phone specific websites. The dotMobi TLD registrar is financially backed by Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefónica Móviles, Telecom Italia Mobile, Orascom Telecom, GSM Association , Hutchison Whampoa, Syniverse Technologies, and VISA. The Moniker auction saw three 6 figure Dot.mobi sales Poker.mobi for $150,000, Ringtones.mobi for $145,000 and News.mobi for $110,000. These join previous Dot.mobi sales of Flowers.mobi for $200,000, Sportsbook.mobi for $129,800, and Fun.mobi for $100,000. Other Dot.mobi domains to sell at Moniker were Email.mobi ($50,000), Podcast.mobi ($25,000) and PDA.mobi and Zipcodes.mobi ($8,000 each). Whilst domain speculation is hot at the moment, it’s not unreasonable to question this sort of money going into obscure domains at a time that new mobile phones (in particular the iPhone, but with many more soon following) display full web pages as opposed to a cut down mobile versions only.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/14/bubble-activity-dotmobi-names-sold-for-6-figures/