The .asia registrar opened its pre-registration for the TLD on February 20. There were 473,633 applications received during the landrush period, and 505,838 applications in total when including domains registered during the sunrise phase as well as .Asia pioneer domains.

As expected, ‘buy.asia’ and ’sex.asia’ fetched the highest number of applications. Meanwhile, domain registrar AsiaDNS led the way with the most applications received during the landrush, followed by Dotalliance, Communigal Communications (galcomm.asia ), Go Daddy and Key-Systems.

“The results exceeded our expectations,” says Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia. “We are very pleased with the enthusiastic demand for the ‘.Asia’ domain. This is a testament to the global interest in the thriving Asia Internet marketplace, and the investment appeal for the most prestigious cyber real-estate in Asia.”

With the domain representing 73 countries across the Asia/Pacific region and a geographical area that covers more than 60 percent of the world’s population, there may be potential problems concerning intellectual property rights, says domain registrar Netnames.

The .asia tld officially launches on March 26.

The Sunrise period for .ASIA, which starts today, is divided into three phases including the acceptance of applications for governmental reserved names, registered trademarks and service mark holders, and for companies in the region to use their name with the .ASIA domain. After the initial Sunrise Period, November 13, 2007 to January 15, 2008 will be devoted to organizations with registered names such as companies.

The final Landrush period is scheduled to begin in February 2008 and is available for anyone meeting the charter eligibility requirements. There will be a closed auction held for all competing applicants in the case of more than one valid application for domains during the Sunrise and Landrush periods. A first-come, first-served registration process for the .ASIA domain is set to begin in March 2008.

The .ASIA tld is dedicated to the Asia community, which is defined by ICANN as Asia, Australia and Pacific regions, and includes 73 countries. While anyone can register for .ASIA domains, the Charter Eligibility Declaration of the applied domain must represent a legal entity in the .ASIA community in order to qualify. A legal entity may be a person or a juristic entity, such as a corporation.