Şahin stated that in the beginning, as the ministry, they planned to finalize the project in 3 years but they’ve revised their goal and after setting up the infrastructure in this year, they plan to start distributing these new electronic IDs before the year comes to an end. Şahin also underlined that botch citizens and government institutions are going to benefit from advantages of electronic IDs when the delivery of all cards are completed. Şahin emphasized that these cards would also help for preventing issues such as fraud and citizens could also enjoy the services of e-Government easily via these IDs. He also indicated that these new electronic IDs will function as travel documentation so there will be no need to keep any other documents or cards at hand.

AveaLabs Customer Experience Center includes the concepts of all studies from smart houses to smart cities, education to local governments inside AveaLabs R&D facility, which hosts 220 engineers. All this samples are introduced by a virtual assistant called RIFKI. The center was established thanks to an intense work of six months, and 1.5 million Turkish liras of additional investment.

In mobile finance section, there are NFC based applications. With NFC based kiosks located in the center, visitors can see that they would pay their electricity, water and gas bills, query their tax or traffic debts; and pay them with their mobile phones that have NFC Bonus technology inside. Furthermore, there is a touch based restaurant table which lets customers order their meals or pay their checks without waiting for a waiter.

In smart home section, the visitors see how to control their houses via their tablets while sitting on their couches. With the help of Avea 3G technology, customers can watch their homes while they are outside, and to check whether they are safe or not. Besides, Avea demos the handover technology which lets users start a phone call from fixed-line inside the house and transfer it to mobile lines simultaneously while getting out of the house.

In youth section, there are some services of Avea focusing on young customers. Avea Music, Mobile Academy Service, digital publishing, smart poster, smart tablet demos are inside this section. Young customers can play games, take photos, make some drawings on the smart table, read books on smart tablets, and get educational services with mobile education service.

In mobile health area, the demos of Avea remote health services like Mobile Examination, Smart Blood Pressure Meter, Smart Scale are given to visitors. The results of the surveys with those services can be sent to health services of family doctors’ systems, so family doctors can easily monitor their patients, and call them for a comprehensive examination if needed.

Smart City area give customers a chance to see how smart applications can be used in Turkey. NFC based mobile phones will replace smart tickets or cards, which are used in many big cities nowadays. Avea SIM based mobile phone can be used to buy smart tickets or to top up. Besides, Smart Municipality concept includes giving QR codes to historical places, letting drivers to monitor their cars inside parking lots.

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!

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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.

We started to talk about TV’s but Samsung Electronics Turkey-Saran Holding cooperation will cover Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones and Android tablets. Galaxy users will have a chance to access all these content while they are on the move with a special Android application. For now, videos will be offered in standart definition, but in the future users will find HD and 3D content on this platform. In addition, there will be synchronization through all devices. For instance, you can start to watch a movie on your Galaxy Tab device and continue to watch it on your TV.

Samsung Smart Club will be coming with 2012 TV models, however some of 2011 models has a chance to get it via a software update, or a special application installation. You can find how Samsung Smart Club application functions in Samsung Galaxy devices in the video below.

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.

Within the registeration process, the users should go to a Turkcell store and give their Mastercard details as part of the registration process. All credit card information will be kept securely. The service lets payments upto 35 Turkish Liras. Above this limit, the users will have use pin code or their signatures for payment.

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.

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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.

Within FATIH Project, education methods will be changed across 620,000 classrooms around Turkey. Students will use tablets instead of physical books and notebooks. Teachers will teach to students via smart boards. This FATIH Project is carried out with the cooperation of Ministry of Education and Ministry of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications.

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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.

One of the most important event during the exhibition was the introduction of PS Vita, Sony’s next generation portable game console. The device will be on sale on February 22th, 2012 in Turkey, just at the same time with North America and Europe. We have managed to have a hands on for this device, and we should imply that 5 inches OLED screen of PS Vita is just stunning. It offers wide angles which will make the gaming experience perfect in all aspects. On the other hand, this bigger OLED screen leads to a much larger device than PSP 3000, but we think that won’t be a problem.

Video: Sony PS Vita Hands-on

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.

Despite struggling across Europe and US, Nokia has still a significant popularity in Turkey. Furthermore, Nokia Turkey is trying hard to attract developers for pushing apps to its Nokia Store. It seems that those efforts are not ineffective.

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