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IDNs are comming to an end.

Why? Because the distinction between an IDN and a regular domain is about to disappear.

Most people didn't notice IDNs before IE7, and they won't notice them for sure after IE7.

All that remains is simply, domains, and now, domains can come in various languages. That's all. Just as it should have been.

Nobody talks of 'multilingual file names' anymore. They just use them.

The same thing is about to happend to domain names.

Another way to look at this:

Francais.com is a typo or misspelling domain of Fran�ais.com.

Yandex.com is a transliterated (and therefore of little value) version of ??????.com.

What is kami.jp worth compared to ?.jp? Not much. Possibly, just a "cool" Latin letter domain for branding purposes.

What is BJFDC.com worth now that we have ?????.com? Nothing. Zero.

Typos, misspellings, transliterations, and everthing else, like pinyin abbreviations, will be priced at what they are: close to worthless in most cases.

Most people don't know there is a domain market, but most people who are aware of the internet know what a domain is.

On the other hand, IDN is a useless nerd distinction for an enabling technology. A term that is outliving its usefullness as we speak, as that technology becomes mainstream and part of the domain name system used by everyone.

Analysis by http://idnin.com/

You make a good point. We should be sensitive to the language preference of the users of a domain.

what nonsense is your reply?  Because it is easier for the people on countries that write in western alphabet and that dont represent less than 0.5% of the visitors, people in Asia -like chinese and japanese- should not use IDNs?

People write in japanese here, the domain should be in japanese.

What do I win with a  www.difficult-to-type-and-difficult-to-read-domain-for-the-99-per-cent-of-my-customers.com ?

According to your reply,  I can have a gem for 99% of my visitors but i shouldnt use it because in a far far away land where people speak other languages a Curious George one day once a year maybe wants to visit a website in other language? Cmon....

Interesting post. I wonder if there will be a place for both IDN's, and their simple ascii version. Sometimes it is just easier to type in an ascii domain, especially for English speakers.