14 DAY TRIAL // Following AOL's recent efforts to increase its European presence, the company launched a new version of its portal, especially addressed to Swedish users. As usual, the new web portal comes with lots of features including an instant messaging client, news, video sharing service and what seems to be the most attractive thing, an email technology which bundles unlimited storage size. A few months ago, AOL rolled out the new portal in Italy and Spain, offering the same service to the local users. But AOL's plans are pretty amazing: the company wants to release no less than 30 European portals in approximately 24 months.
"Europe is one of the key engines of growth for AOL. This market is growing faster than the US with online advertising spending in Western Europe forecast to grow by 25% per year until 2009. We expect to cover over 95% of the Europe online advertising market within 18 months. AOL is already successful in Europe and the launch of this new portal underlines our commitment to the continent," Dana Dunne, Chief Executive Officer of AOL Europe, said.
With more and more companies to invest into Europe, this side of the online industry will soon host all the famous technologies coming from the US companies. Obviously, with local versions, similar to the ones provided by AOL. Baidu, one of the top players in the Chinese market said it might prepare to launch its services in Europe but until now, there is no sign of this move.
"We're very pleased to be launching AOL.se. Sweden is a very strong online market, with high broadband penetration and huge opportunities for online advertising. Launching a dedicated portal here will enable us compete for both consumers and advertisers. AOL has the heritage, the infrastructure and the scale to offer Sweden a strong local portal that meets the needs of online users," the same AOL official added.