IT & TELECOMMUNICATIONS IN TURKEY

Information technology (IT) market size in Turkey was estimated at USD 1.8 billion in 2003, continuing its rather low paced recovery towards its peak of $2.4 billion in 2000. Until the twin financial crises in November 2000 and February 2001, the IT sector had always performed better growth rates compared to general economy, including the economical crisis of 1994. Worldwide crises in the internet and telecommunciations sectors added lower confidence and diminishing investment to the contracted demand by the local economic crises.
Until 1980, fixed telephone line penetration of Turkey was barely 2.5 %. New investment in the 1980s by the national operator Turk Telekom raised penetration to 27.3% by 2001 – making Turkey’s public switched telephone network (PSTN) the fourteenth largest in the world and the fifth largest in Europe by subscriber volume, although revenue per subscriber is still low. Turk Telekom invested $ 6.6 billion between 1990 and 1999, half of which was spent on digitalizing telephone exchanges. Other major investments include three communication satellites and an internet backbone. In 2004, voice transmission services dominated by Turk Telekom were liberalized and 14 companies were granted the right to provide data transmission services over fixed line and 41 companies were granted the right to provide long distance telephony service.

Mobile telecommunications were introduced in 1986 by Turk Telekom offering car phones using Nordic Mobile Telephone’s analog technology. In 1994, GSM 900 technology was introduced by two private operators, Turkcell and Telsim, but only when the full licenses were granted to these two companies in 1998 that GSM penetration boomed. In 2002, two other GSM operators were licensed, Aria (joint venture between Is-Bank and Telecom Italia Mobile) and Aycell (wholly owned by Turk Telekom) which merged in 2004 under the name Avea. Turk Telekom is planned to be privatized and the deadline for submitting bids for the tender is May 1, 2005.

Turkish PC market is a highly dynamic and rapidly growing market. The market experienced some slowing in pace after the economical crises in 2000 and 2001 but showed signs of recovery in 2003 and has been on a growth trend since then with almost 800,000 PC shipments on an annual basis. The penetration level in large enterprises is above 90% in approximately 350 accounts with this rate going down to 65% in medium size enterprises in approximately 1400 accounts and 9% in small business in approximately 1,000,000 accounts . The overall PC penetration rate for the country is forecasted to be around 6% by the end of 2004.

Market Evaluation
* Turkey, with her over 70 million population, is a growing market for information technology and telecommunication sectors; not only due this big volume but also due to the fact that 60% of the population is below the age of 25 which makes Turkey a market suitable for the introduction of new technologies.

* The low level of penetration rates of PC, internet, fixed-line telephony and mobile telephony enable room for growth in the short term.

* The IT market in Turkey is specifically ideal for companies that have customizable software solutions which can be marketed in Turkey via the already established and well-spread solution providers channel.

* Small business segment with 9% PC penetration rate but with high growth trend and one-millon companies in total is a segment that can be targeted by IT companies that have special IT solutions for SMEs which will help them grow their business.

MORE INFO:

CATALOG ABOUT TURKEY