A few days ago, the 1,5 millionth .fr domain name was registered via AFNIC (.fr registry). The domain name lessecouesduvocal.fr was registered by a group of professional performers from Haute-Savoie.
With 1,5 million registrations the .fr extension seems to do very well. In January 2002, only 100,000 .fr names were registered. In June this number had risen up to 500,000. After June 2006, registrations started to speed up and in January 2008, the amount of 1 million .fr registrations was reached. In September 2010, this had risen up to 1,5 million.
The success and the rise of .fr registrations can be explained by the speed and the simplicity of such a registration. Moreover the French seem to be quite chauvinistic as a .fr extension is the ideal extension to address an audience in France.