Snapnames, purveyor of the Snapback product, and would-be joint-purveyor of the Wait List Service for expired domain names, puts out a good summary of the state of the domain name industry available here.  Highlights from the most recent issue: after falling for many months, the total of .com, .net and .info names might finally have risen in July.  However worldwide registrations of the gTLDs seems to be only 30-40,000 a day.  Snapnames offerred a prediction: an industry which sells 30-40,000 units a day worldwide at $2 to $3 per unit gross margin, cannot support 122 healthy companies.

So we are not going to see 122 registrars a year from now.

Upate: Thestreet.com article on domain name industry trends.

Next update:  Ross of Tucows and Brett of the ICANN blog have taken me to task on this prediction.  Let me be more specific.  We are not going to see 122 registrars running profitable gTLD registrar businesses a year from now.  We may see many companies obtaining accreditation incidental to other businesses, another argument for the title of this blurb.