ZAP (fka ZAAP)

[BubbleBuddy]

hetfielt, don’t listen to the others. The web site is real. It was constructed and is maintained by Zhejiang Yongyuan Motorcycle Manufacturing Co., Ltd.

Because of how domain names are constructed and work (ownership is from right-to-left in the dot-dot-dot syntax), the ‘m’ prefix therefore is owned by Zhejiang Yongyuan Motorcycle Manufacturing Co., Ltd. since “jonwaymotor” is the higher level name belonging to them according to WHOIS. In other words, “The hierarchy of domains descends from the right to the left label in the name; each label to the left specifies a subdivision, or subdomain of the domain [owner] to the right” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name).

The ‘m’ prefix is a standard designation used to differentiate a web site (own by the higher level domain holder) designed for mobile devices. In this case, the owner of the lower ‘m.’ prefix is “jonwaymotor“. If a domain name does not have such a separate mobile (paralleled) website maintained designated by the ‘m.’ prefix, the default behavior causes you to get redirected to the regular (higher level) domain. This is how Amazon is setup (i.e. you get the default redirection to the higher level amazon.com, since they do not have a separate mobile device ‘m.’-prefixed site and defined no overriding behavior for their higher-level domain).

I also tried it on my own web site using my domain name. Since I do not have an ‘m.’ (lower level) prefix name defined nor any defined overriding behavior for my domain, I get redirected to my default (higher level) .com domain name to which I OWN the passwords, logon and all administration rights!

Since Zhejiang Yongyuan Motorcycle Manufacturing Co., Ltd. plainly built a separate ZAP website for English language mobile devices (i.e. a 'm.' sub-domain for their higher-level jonwaymotor domain), the address sticks and you do not get redirected to their default Chinese language site.

What I find interesting is that the 'm.jonwaymotor.com' site is new and has Zap plastered all over it and is in English. A foreign company does not invest into building an English language mobile-device site that advertises their latest products unless something is going on. We’ll have to wait and see.