Only a few interested parties from foreign countries have registered .de domains. This is the result of an analysis performed by the German domain registry DENIC. Since the autumn of 2000, when the registration terms have been changed to allow foreign registrants, only about 15,000 domains have been registered to users with a foreign residence. The overwhelming majority of meanwhile 5.3 million .de domains continues to be registered to German users.

"This confirms that the .de domain is strongly rooted in the German market and substantiates our expectation that the registration below .de from a foreign country is only an exception", says DENIC board member Sabine Dolderer. While there are registrations from more than 100 countries, most of them originate from German-speaking neighbors Austria and Switzerland, followed by the USA. "Users expect primarily German or German-language offerings under a .de-domain and obviously domain registrants agree. de-domains therefore remain the first choice for German users."