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Recent figures form Turkish PayTV market & Netflix

Finally, it is possible to reach the service of Netflix from Turkey. As a technology blogger, it is, in a way, my duty to comment on this important development. 

I first want to share some figures from Turkish TV market. The data set is available for public access through the web page of the Supreme Council. Data is published as quarterly and latest is Q3 of 2015, which is published in December 2015. Total number of households is taken as 22 M:

According to the data set, that I shared the link above, there are totally 5.994.631 subscribers in Turkey, to the TV services. The distribution of these subscribers are as follows:
As you see above, the percentage is same :) There four Direct To Home Satellite PayTV Operators in Turkey, namely Digiturk, DSmart, FillBox & Tivibu. Total number of subscribers of these services is 4.367.153 There is one cable TV operator, which is Turksat, state owned & also the satellite operator. There are two IPTV operators: Tivibu (a service of the telco, Turk Telekom) & Turkcell TV (a service of mobile operator, Turkcell). The total number of subscribers to these services is 1.627.478 

It is easy to draw another graph showing the market share of each operator, but it is not in the scope of this post. so although I have such a graph, I prefer not to put in this post. 

You may ask, where the DTT is. Well, we all are looking for it for years :) Unfortunately there is no DTT network, there is also no finished tender, for the frequency allocation. Hopefully it is believed that till the end of 2016, we will start to have a DTT. 

After sharing the latest figures of Turkish PayTV market, now let me talk about Netflix. 

To be honest, some of us, was already watching Netflix content. There are many ways to do this and I am sure that the readers of this blog & Netflix already know this fact. Turkey is a big country in terms of population. There are more than 20 M of households and with its attitude to the new technologies, it is also an important market for high tech solutions and products. 

In this manner, I believe that Netflix will be successful. There are some issues which are not so clear:
  • According to the Act #6112, all TV, radio & on demand video services should be licensed, no matter what technology they use. But, the sub Act is not defined yet, to license OTT services. Actually it is a common problem all over the world, as it is not that easy to distinguish the OTT & WebTV or streaming services like You Tube. 
  • The TV viewing habits of Turkish citizens are changing. It is a common belief that linear TV is loosing & non linear is gaining power. But, the internet connection is not that common in Turkey, when you compare with OECD or EU members. I will try to discuss about the statistics of broadband connection in another post. This may affect the success of Netflix. 
  • The content with Turkish voice over or subtitle is not that common right now. I hope that time to time, these will increase. Also I hope that the Turkish local content will be available. 
Netflix, will transform the market and this is a good news for the people working in this sector. 

I want to conclude here with stating that:


My blog is always open to Netflix and any other sector firm for an e-interview. 

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