The .CN domain has lost 10 million registrants in 14 months.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) reports that as of February 28, the number of registered domain names in the .CN zone has dropped sharply to 3.3 million active domains.

The total number of registered domain names peaked at 13 million in December 2009, when .CN was considered the most popular geo-domain.

As a result of the reduction in the number of names, the .CN domain has lost its leadership and is now in fifth or even sixth place.

The reason for this decline was the end of the registrant incentives offered in 2008 and 2009, which included low registration fees. Furthermore, the introduction of registration restrictions had a negative impact on registrant activity.

The registration restriction is being enforced by 600 temporary employees hired in February of last year to check all .CN domain names for pornographic content and WhoIS records.

Thus, the German ccTLD (the .DE domain zone) currently remains the leader in terms of the number of registrations (14,304,857). It is followed by .UK (the United Kingdom domain) with 9,194,231 registrations, .NL (the Netherlands) in third place with 4,370,120 registrations, and .EU (the European Union) in fourth place with 3,383,275 registrations.

Among gTLD domains, .COM remains the leader with 92 million registrations. .NET follows with approximately 13 million registrations. .ORG has approximately 9 million registrations (as of March 2011), and .INFO has 6.5 million (as of September 2010).