AOL Plans Brazil Launch Soon

BY JOACHIM BAMRUD

Nearly a decade after launching in Brazil for the first time and three years after leaving the country, AOL will make a new attempt at conquering Latin America's largest market. AOL plans to launch a Brazilian site later this year or early next year, according to Ralph Rivera, senior vice president and general manager of AOL Latin America.

"As part of the relationship with HP, we're definitely entering Brazil," he says. "It will be later this year or early next year."

Partly thanks to its agreement with Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest PC producer, AOL has seen a jumping start in Latin America this year. HP computers come with AOL as the default Internet browser home page. AOL launched country-specific sites for Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela in June, following a Mexico-specific site in January.

The launches mark AOL's return to a region it left in 2005, when its AOL Latin America division filed for bankruptcy protection after its strategy failed to attract enough subscribers.  From a high of 1.4 million subscribers in 2002, it ended up with 400,000 subscribers three years later, according to USA Today.

This time round, though, AOL is following another business strategy, Rivera points out. Instead of ...

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Keywords: Argentina, Colombia, IAB Mexico, IPR, Mexico, ZenithOptimedia, Venezuela