As part of its expansion plans to garner larger market share outside the US, the world?s largest media and entertainment company, Time Warner, is all set to launch Hindi and Tamil versions of its hugely popular AOL portal.
AOL will be launched in 30 regions globally by the end of 2008 as part of the conglomerate?s international expansion plans.
The online unit of Time Warner Inc will also enable video searching in eight regions outside the US through Truveo, considered the world’s most popular video search engine. These include France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan and the UK.
AOL, which restructured its domestic and global businesses a year ago by giving most of its services for free to focus on boosting online advertising sales, sees international expansion as a major growth area. As part of the restructuring, it sold off its Internet access services business outside the US and began launching free portals.
In the past few months, it has launched versions of its free site in Sweden, Spain and Italy.
AOL, once the top online service in the US, surprised the market at the end of the second quarter by reporting only 16% growth in online advertising, as compared to the 40% levels of the prior four quarters.
AOL realigned its advertising business in September, aiming to be a one-stop shop for marketers seeking to buy advertising on other websites through its advertising.com unit, on cellphones or AOL.com.
Time Warner has also announced a tie-up with the ABP group to launch the Indian versions of Fortune magazine. Fortune is presently the world’s leading business magazine and the India edition, Fortune India is expected to have a mix of global content and locally sourced news.
The magazine is likely to be launched next spring and is the third country-specific edition after the 10-year old Fortune China and Fortune Turkey, launched last month.