I think the Belgian market is really attractive, and I'll tell you why...
- there's money to be made as general population is rather wealthy (on average, most Belgians have 50K on their saving accounts. This was on national television a couple of weeks ago)
- people overhere love the internet. The government is also stimulating internet-usage via offering an online tax-filing site, e-government projects, an electronical id which can be used on the internet, offering free or sharply reduced broadband connections to some,....
- at least 3 languages are spoken: Flemish [55%], French [40%] & German [5%]. Most people know how to express them in English (certainly the ones active on the Net).
- the .be-extension has become very popular thanks to promotional campaigns by DNS.be, Belgium's registry.
- DNS.be should be one of the better registries outthere: hyper fast transfers, very fast NS-updates, superbe helpdesk, etc etc etc So that helps
- Powerful keyword .be's attract nice typin-volumes. They also convert very well.
I guess registrars will not like what I will say now, but I think it's too late to pick up "good .be's". Most (if not all) are taken.
The value of 3-letter .be's depends on the quality of its letters: 95% of them are worth next to nothing.
OK, now I talked about all the positive aspects, there are some downsides to .be as well...
1. "Domaining" is still not accepted by the general public. It's regarded as something "criminal". I often get email from people insulting me because I own a domain they want. The concept of "domains as e-realestate" has definately not found ground...yet.
2. Due to some cases of cybersquatting, a (very) strict law has been voted which prohibits the registration of domains which are an infringment on TM.
This is nothing different as in other countries, you might think. But actually, it is...
As soon as you own a domain on which someone else might have "rights", you can be brought before court and in 95% of the cases, you'll be ordered to transfer the domain. Geographical places, family names, TM's,... when "bad faith" is proven, you'll have to surrender the name.
I think this strict law is a major downside to investing in .be's.
3. Most Belgian companies haven't discovered the power of domainnames...yet. As a consequence, they are not willing to pay the amounts we are used to see on DNJournal.
Hope this helps.