I am in a Country that blindly insists on using the Country extension .ie and I can't see that changing anytime soon. In fact, they will probably all just skip Dot.Com completely and move straight to the new tlds.
It wasn't always like that. There was a time when a .IE was priced at around 125 Euro. The prices have fallen over the last twenty years or so but it is still anything from 5 to 30 Euros depending on which registrar is used. The .IE dominates the Irish market and the gTLDs are struggling. Even the .IRISH hasn't made much of an impact on the market.
As of 01 November 2019, these are the gTLD counts on Irish hosters:
.COM: 135,399
.NET: 9,943
.ORG: 7,416
.BIZ: 1,145
.INFO: 1,963
.MOBI: 450
.ASIA: 78
New gTLDs: 5,754
.IRISH: 1,014
.CLUB: 198
The 01 November 2018 figures are:
.COM: 139,363
.NET: 10,722
.ORG: 7,805
.BIZ: 1,369
.INFO: 2,208
.MOBI: 530
.ASIA: 93
New gTLDs: 5,475
.IRISH: 1,153
.CLUB: 224
Don't think that there will be any shift to new gTLDs any time soon. The second largest ccTLD in the Irish market is .UK with 33,801.
The Irish market was .COM focused when the prices on .IE were high and .COM was around 12 Euro but that's changed. This gTLD to ccTLD shift, where the main growth in a country's domain name market, always happens as the market matures. It has also happened on most European markets.
The non-core legacy gTLDs (BIZ/INFO/MOBI/ASIA) are in decline. The core legacy gTLDs (COM/NET/ORG) are relatively stable but the main growth is in .IE rather than the gTLDs.
The .COM is where the money and the buyers are. Unless people know a ccTLD market well, they will generally end up losing money on it because outside of a few very high value premiums, the old "what's valuable in .COM should be valuable in a ccTLD" idea simply does not work. This is because people in a ccTLD dominated market consider the ccTLD to be their TLD and don't have to remember the extension. When you have to explain that the domain name that you are trying to sell is a .COM or anything else, it becomes a far more difficult sale. As for the new gTLDs in the Irish market, many of the registrations are brand protection registrations (the owners have their domain name in .IE or .COM and are protecting the brand) rather than domain names for development.
Sharp declines in various TLDs, that's not the problem. The problem is when they shift their market focus. This generally happens when a stalled or plateaued gTLD decides to target the Asian markets because registrations from the rest of the world have stalled. They target the Asian markets with heavily discounted offers for the first year. This boosts the number of domain names in the gTLD and it appears that they are doing well but these discounted domain names don't renew well. If a registry is lucky, the renewal rate will be approaching 5%. More often, the renewal rate is closer to zero. This changes the geography of the gTLD so what had been a mainly English language gTLD with potential splits into a market with a smaller English language market and equally strong or stronger Chinese and Japanese language markets. In simple terms, it means that that high value, single English language keyword domain name just dropped in value by as much as 40%. If it is in a new gTLD, then the value will be much lower than that of the equivalent in .COM or even a ccTLD.
The problem with domaining is that there is only a few ways to make money and many ways to lose it.
Regards...jmcc