The blockbuster deal announced earlier this month between America Online and Time Warner will help juice e-commerce activities in Canada, says Stephen Bartkiw, CEO of Toronto-based AOL Canada.
‘Canadian business has largely taken a wait-and-see attitude toward e-commerce,’ said Bartkiw, in a recent telephone interview from AOL’s corporate headquarters in Dulles, Va.
‘What this announcement will do is accelerate the development of e-commerce by Canadian retailers in many different categories. Because of the amount of press the deal has received, and the magnitude of the announcement, it’s clearly reaching a lot of people. It’s really letting them know that the medium has come of age.’
The merger was widely touted as creating the first fully integrated media and communications company for the ‘Internet Century’ and, at the time of the announcement, had an all-stock combination value of US$350 billion.
Bartkiw says the proposed merger, which senior executives anticipate being approved by the end of the year, will provide an opportunity for AOL to ramp up its broadband business.
‘And with respect to Canadian business, it gives us an opportunity to showcase Canadian content,’ Bartkiw says. AOL Canada currently has 75 content partners – providers of news, shopping and entertainment.
Bruce Leichtman, an Internet analyst with the Boston-based Yankee Group, says the deal expands AOL’s goals in extending the reach of the Internet beyond its current home on PCs. And despite its dominance of the market for dial-up Internet access, AOL has struggled to find a way into the broadband market of the future.
‘The company has already struck a range of deals to bring its services to consumers through everything from wireless phones to satellite TV receivers,’ he says. ‘AOL can now reach an additional base of cable customers with interactive content, advertising and other services that will be carried over digital cable set-top devices now being deployed.’
