Sony’s next generationg gaming console, aka PlayStation Vita showed its face to Turkish gamers last month in GameX 2011. It will be on sale on February 22nd in Turkey as well as Europe, Africa, Middle East, North America and Australia. Sony has just started to take preorders for PS Vita, which has 5-inch OLED touchscreen, touchpad on the back, dual analog sticks and cameras.
There will be both 3G/Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi versions for PS Vita, and both will be sold within special bundles. Crystal black 3G/Wi-Fi model will be bundled with Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and can be preordered from 959 Turkish Liras (~539$) now. For crystal black Wi-Fi model, gamers can pay 799 Turkish Liras ( ~449$), and they will get Modnation Racers Road Trip game along with the portable console. We believe that retail prices wouldn’t be so much different from these prices after the launch. However, we will get you informed about the situation in Turkey after February 22nd. Stay in touch with us!
Samsung’s flat panels see a huge demand in Turkey. This is due to the quality of panels as well as Samsung’s smart TV services. Samsung’s Smart Hub portal has been coming up in selected TV models since 2010. And the number of local applications have been increasing consistently. However smart TV applications are not enough alone, you should give more to customers in order to make your service more attractive. This is what Samsung does with its cooperation with Saran Holding, one of important media content providers in Turkey.
Saran Holding has the rights of movies produced by some big Hollywood studios, such as Warner Bros. and Walt Disney. In next three years, all those movies will have been offered to customers through Samsung’s new smart device content platform, called Samsung Smart Club. Besides films from Warner Bros. and Walt Disney, there will be some TV shows and cartoons from these studios, as well as RHI Entertainment. The cost of these content will be provided by Samsung, so the users will access them from their smart devices for free. Furthermore, users will be able to watch newest movies after they are stopped playing in movie theaters, but they will have to pay for them.
Turkcell has been offering BlackBerry Bold 9900 for a few months. RIM’s flagship device is also known as having an NFC chip. This provides basic information exchange processes as well as mobile payment applications. Turkcell introduced its mobile payment service, dubbed as Cep-T Cuzdan, last year. This service offers Turkcell customers to make payments through NFC-based handsets. Turkcell T20, operator’s own-branded Android phone, has an NFC chipset, and thus it was the first device supporting NFC based payments through Cep-T Cuzdan. Now, BlackBerry Bold 9900 will have the advantages of mobil payments through Turkcell Cep-T Cuzdan service, thanks to its NFC chipset.
BlackBerry Bold 9900 owners, who are also Turkcell subscribers, have a chance to make their payments with their smartphones through MasterCard PayPass contactless payment devices, which are distributed across 60 bin different shopping and other units around Turkey. Besides, Turkcell customers going abroad will be able to use the same system with their devices.
Avea has been very active for a year to add high profile mobile devices to its product portfolio. Recently, it announced the availability of two popular Android devices in its device offerings. Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, introduced in IFA 2011, and Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which was developed with the cooperation of Google, and has the reputation of being the first Ice Cream Sandwich device, will meet with Turkish customers very soon.
There is no exact information of when Avea will start to distrubute these devices, and how much it will ask from customers who will want to buy them. But, we know that Avea will have the exclusivity of three months for Galaxy Nexus. If you want to buy a Galaxy Tab 7.7 or a Galaxy Nexus in Turkey, you will have to go to an Avea shop, at least for the first three months.
Turkish government targets to revolutionize classrooms via its FATIH project, and for that purpose, it plans to distribute millions of tablets to students. The first batch of those tablets, which is around 4000, will be provided by General Mobile. Tablets are only one part of the project. In addition, traditional white boards will be replaced with smartboards which are connected to computers located inside classrooms and having internet connection.
The first bidding process for smartboards was conducted two months ago, and Vestel won the bidding process form 84,921 interactive boards by offering the lowest price, which is 339.6 million TRY. The agreement after this bidding process have just been signed. With reference to this agreement, Vestel will ship first 200 smart boards next month. Vestel CEO Omer Yungul told that they would be in the second and the third bidding processes.
As we mentioned earlier, iPhone 4S went on sale in Turkey last Friday. Apple’s fifth generation smartphone has been in market for a week, and according to mobile operators, the demand for this device is high. All of three mobile operators in Turkey offer iPhone 4S to their customers. Besides that, it is possible to find iPhone 4S in electronic retail stores.
Avea, Turkcell and Vodafone have different price plans with 24 months of commitment, whose monthly fees start from 99 TRY (~52$). However, for customers not preferring monthly plans, all three operators offers the device without contract. Prices for iPhone 4S without contract starts from 21oo TRY (1107$), which is the price for 16 GB model. As you can see, it is much higher than the price in US. However, adding custom and other taxes increases the price to this level. Furthermore 32 GB model is sold around 2500 TRY, and 64 GB model is sold around 2900 TRY.
The volume of digital entertainment and gaming industry has reached to 70 billion $ worldwide, and like other countries, Turkey is aiming to take a significant share from this appealing industry. GameX 2011, which was held between December 1st and 4th in Istanbul, was a good example to show the potential and opportunities in Turkish market.
GameX 2011 was organized by Ronesans Fair with the main sponsorship of Sobee Studies which is a subsidiary of Turk Telekom. There were significant contributors such as TTNet, Playstore, TTÇocuk, Tivibu, Avea, Teknosa, Toshiba, Sony, Dell, Alien Ware, Nintendo, Joy Game ve Nfinity Games, Gamebridger, Buddiepay, Gameplus, and Anybots. Sobee Studios introduced the new updates for its existing games such as Istanbul Kiyamet Vakti, I Can Football 2: Manchester United, 1 Man 1 Team, and Supercan, which are all popular among Turkish players.
Nokia Turkey has announced that there had been more than 100 million downloads from Nokia Store Turkey. This brings Turkey the most active country across Europe. Besides that, Turkey is number three regarding downloads all over the world.
It was asserted that Nokia Store has grown three times for a year, and daily downloads has passed 10 million. There are more than 90,000 apps in Nokia Store, and Turkey has grabbed the first place thanks to 2.2 million of weekly downloads. There are some popular Turkish sofware companies whose apps see significant demand from Nokia users. Dijital gözlük, Cohous and Teknomart are among them with apps passing 1 million download threshold.
Samsung Galaxy Note was one of the most popular devices of IFA event this year. This device was located between tablets and smartphones. It has an gorgeous screen with 5.3 inches, and its capacitive touch screen can be used with a special stylus which is called S-Pen by Samsung. Galaxy Note also features a 1.4 GHz dual core processor and 8 megapixel camera with 1080p video recording capability.
Samsung Galaxy Note has already gone on sale around the world, it didn’t take too much time for this device to meet with the customers in Turkey. The devices has just started to appear on the shelves in Samsung retail shops. Besides that, Turkcell offers this devices to its customers with some special price plans. The price is set around 2250 TRY (1230$) which comes a bit higher than outside the country, due to additional taxes.
Apple promised to launch iPhone 4S in 70 different countries until the end of the year, and we believed that Turkey was one of those countries. We were right. Although Apple hasn’t made an official statement about additional countries for the launch of iPhone 4S yet, mobile carriers in Turkey have already announced that they would start to offer iPhone 4S to their customers on December 16th.
Avea and Turkcell shared this information through both their websites and Twitter accounts. Besides, Vodafone also placed a banner on its website, telling people that iPhone 4S would go on sale soon. Any of the operators have defined their prices or plans yet. We believe they would be ready just before the launch day.
