N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

Hi,

There are about 70 mil. native Turkish speakers in 36 countries (including Turkey, with its population over 74 mil) and IIRC Turkey is a great developing market for mobile device manufacturers and 3G being rolled out just recently (we were 78th country in the world, I know it sucks) helps new device sales a lot.

Also you couldn't imagine the amount of buzz N900 created just in two months before it was announced in NW'09 though there were not even a bit of official advertisement around, WoM and online media did the trick.

But N900 doesn't have Turkish UI, and "Nokia Turkey" replies our questions regarding N900 import as "We can't import it unless it has Turkish UI according to local laws, so we're not thinking of importing it currently".

In addition to this, in Turkey we have a IMEI registration with networks procedure to render devices useless that are stolen, illegally imported or with illegally altered/cloned IMEIs. So when you're going to buy a phone from abroad, you can't ship it by usual ways; it has to be carried with a passenger arriving from abroad to be able to register it's IMEI with networks, otherwise phone will be locked out in a week (I know that's PITA but we have nothing to do against it, damn politics..). That's why we crucially need official import of phones or access to people coming from abroad to make them buy and register for us.

So may I ask kindly; why Turkish is completely left out of the N900 party, while there are lots of less common languages with smaller markets in?

Thanks in advance for any answer.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

That's an interesting law. What's the motivation for it? Protection of Turkish language and culture? Protection of local industry by reduction of parallel imports?

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Well, people shouldn't be required to know any other language to use a device they buy while translation is not impossible.

Each import product must be shipped to customers with a Turkish UI, labels, UG etc. according to laws.

Also we were charged 3 SMSs while sending 1 SMS with 160 chars including special Turkish chars (because of UTF-16 char encoding), so phones are now required to support 7-bit Turkish SMS char set which is approved by 3GPP last year.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Bingo! Well, might be really interesting, South Korea has exactly same IMEI regulation as in Turkey. Also, it is more hard to register certain IMEI than Turkey.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Sure, but if the people do know the other language, then why should they be forbidden by law from buying the non-Turkish-UI device if they so choose?

That's what I found interesting about the law.

Presumably no-one was forcing Turkish users to buy non-Turkish devices ... ? Or maybe they were, by failing to offer any Turkish-UI devices ... ? Is that it?

Then I suppose the Turkish government reckoned their home market was big enough that the phone providers would comply to a Turkish-UI-only law. And now Nokia is calling your bluff, by ignoring your market.

So, now, instead of having no Turkish-UI devices, you have no devices at all in Turkey.

Tough break, man. :(

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

We are not forbidden to buy non-Turkish-UI device, just corporates are required to import devices with Turkish setup/documentation.

We had to buy a lot of stuff without Turkish setup/documentation for long enough time, because many manufacturers/importers didn't prepare them to avoid the cost of localization, unless it was required by law.

Turkish government just tried to protect Turkish customers since many people were unable to use devices they bought completely or effectively, simply because they couldn't understand it.

But Nokia was great in this aspect, they always provided localized stuff even before the law was applied (exception: Internet Tablets)

As I said before, we can ship devices in a special way (with abroad passengers) and there are many people abusing that way as a "business".,They're earning really good money because some devices are not imported for couple of reasons (lack of localization, manufacturers' marketing strategies etc)

Also there are a lot of Nokia Internet Tablets around, though Nokia Turkey didn't bother to import officially.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Well, you can thank the Turkish government from protecting you from the non-Turkish N900 anyhow, eh? :D

As for why Nokia didn't produce a localized Turkish N900, I'd guess it was simply that an IF statement in a beancounter's spreadsheet returned FALSE for Turkish sales projections versus product development costs.

I wouldn't take it personally.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Well, I still can buy one, when any store on earth has it; thanks to super fast (you can't believe'em) system abusers that are feeding demand instead of official supplier.

I'd buy this guess, if Nokia wasn't producing & selling every kind of localized devices officially just except Internet Tablets.

I'd also buy this guess, if I wasn't living in such a country that has more expensive cars in streets than total population of some other countries. Yes, cars are not related with the matter but that was just an example of how our people like expensive stuff and with the help of a very well established installment system (there are virtually nothing you can't buy without installments) they buy those stuff easily, that's why I don't think Turkish sales projections were low enough.

I don't take it personally but I can't stop wondering their official & senseful reason.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

On a second thought, you might be right. Nokia Turkey really sucks when it comes to marketing, there were many people (including some phone retailers) asking me if my N82 was a Chinese phone since they didn't know it or seen in any media.

But then Nokia should investigate it's Turkey office's efficiency if Turkish sales projections were low, instead of not producing devices.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

native language support important for customer care also,
if you dont translate your device to turkish language one day someone can use that device for tdiffeernt purpose, and if it had some damage, than Turkish law authorities can give responsibility to producer. becouse people can say "i dont understand but they sold us an english language device. thats why i didnt know that i did smth wrong"

Turkish language is necessary imo, Turkey is great market for nokia also other mobile device manifacturers