According to Netcraft the total no. of domains registered in December is 1M less as compared with November. This is attributed to Zipa (a hosting and colocation service) losing 1 Million users after their .name promo expired after the 60 days period… what I don’t see however is the effect of Belgium giving the .be domain extension for free…
And for me, this is just the market correcting itself, what’s 1 M lost against 17.5 M gained in a 10 month span? It’s still 16.5M over… 
Article here