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

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Nokia isn't even allowed to sell the N900 if they don't translate the UI and manual into Turkish as far as I recall.
A Turkish localisation would also b eappreciated by the ~10 million Turks living in West Europe (me, for example)
I'm not expecting a localisation, though. As the N97 is selling pretty well in Turkey as far as I know. :)

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

why n900 not come in turkey.I don't understand

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

It's not allowed to be sold in Turkey right now unfortunately :(
Hope Nokia Turkey stops being lazy and translates/adds input support asap so I can buy it :P

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

i am so sorry for my language....with my english i can not talk.
türkei ein land mit mehr als 75 millonen einwohner wird von nokia nicht mit dem entsprechendem wissen über das land verwaltet.
das marketing in der türkei ist mangelhaft.
das wissen über die verbraucher ist nicht richtig dargestellt
ein land wo laufend mobil telefone gekauft werden und der andrang gross ist ein neues telefon zu kaufen was neu auf dem markt ist.
also wo nokia seine ware gut verkaufen kann!!
nicht nur in der türkei leben menschen die türkisch sprechen sondern auf der ganzen weld.
also welche marketigchefs sind so einsichtslos das sie das aus den augen lassen.
meiner meinung nach muss nokia das n900 in der türkei auf den markt bringen auch mit türkischer menüführung.
sonst entgeht nokia ein grosser teil vom kuchen.
also wer auf das gelg verzichten kann und will kann ich nur sagen das ich das finnische unternehmen nicht klug finde.
ich lebe in deutschland und habe das n900 bestellt aber ich will das türkische menü haben was nun NOKIA??????????

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Welcome kcakkol... errr wilkommen.

I will leave replying to someone who speaks German. :)

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Folks, you completely hijacked the thread from the announcement of availability of the user guide to "Turkish not supported".
"Congrats". If there was a Thumbs-Down, I'd give it.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Sorry about that, can a moderator please split this thread into two threads?

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

It is done.

Re: Turkish not supported
 

Strange laws from a western perspective, indeed. I never knew about them. It's certainly something they'd have to change if they'd seriously wanted to join the EU (which I doubt meanwhile). ;)

OTOH, we're not here to judge but to find solutions. We will not find a solution for a Nokia marketing decision based on whatever factors we don't know.
But the community can provide a Turkish UI and even several Turkish keyboard variants for the onscreen-kbd to make the N900 more enjoyable for those Turkish speaking people who live in countries with more liberal laws. (Or to make it more attractive to import the device to Turkey.)

Once a framework is in place, you could use the standard mechanisms already in place to translate third party software.

I realize there's more ppl than I thought here who speak Turkish as their first language. If one of them could just set up a project and do the coordination work, I'm sure it could be done in relatively short time. Sooner than MMS-support, I'd guess. ;)

Re: Turkish not supported
 

Despite the law is open to many questions, you're right, we're not here to judge but to find solutions.

I'd really love to lead a translation project but I don't have needed resources at the moment. How can we obtain the strings that needs to be translated?

And for Nokia marketing decision.. I heard (from a Turkish guy claiming that he attended Maemo summit and talked with someone from Nokia) that people at Nokia HQ don't have any realistic information about Turkish market. I believe that and I think it's their Turkey office's fault.

There was a time you could hardly see anyone buying any brands except Nokia in Turkey, but Samsung became the leader now. Why? As I said in #9 post, Nokia Turkey's marketing division is simply dummy (and other brands took advantage of it). Just because they can't report back "We could sell Y units but sold X, because we weren't efficient enough while marketing", so they probably report "We sold X units and we did our best, sorry" and mislead. I am telling all those off-topic stuff just to wake Nokia HQ up, in case someone reads this thread one day. So sorry for OT talk.

PS: Today I've seen someone selling his preordered N900 (to be shipped when it arrives to him) and the price was 1950 TL ($1320/€890) at the last time I checked. Shocked?

Re: Turkish not supported
 

strategy completely wrong , can not foresee , lack of marketing skills ...who?nokia employees from türkei....
just ISTANBUL is over 15 million people.Most of the population of a country of young people ...we want N900 to TÜRKEI....(3g brand new system in türkei)we need just n900 not apple iphone!!!!

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

another tactical point for the market is that Nokia was not expecting N900 to generate this much hype and preorders.

N97 is supposed to be its flagship device, and Nokia is in a way going to cannibalize on its N97 sales, when they introduce N900 to new markets.

Keeping N900 out of Turkey might be just one way of getting rid of the N97 stock as all of you have pointed out, there is a high population in Turkey interested in high-tech cellphones, and N97 will keep on selling there (even though iphone dominates the turkish high-end market, with RIM possibly coming in at 2nd place).

As I'm also Turkish, I know that more than 80% of this demand is for social status purposes (which happens everywhere around the globe). However, there's also an upcoming generation of developers, and tech-enthusiasts, who would like nothing more than to get an N900, and possibly start enjoying & contributing.

Sadly, it's going to take while until N900 enters the Turkish market (and there's no guarantee for this either, as the internet tablets did not enter the Turkish market through legal means either).

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

Thanks smage, your "getting rid of the N97 stock" theory makes sense in commercial logic, but then I wonder what's the stock condition of other lucky markets receiving N900, and if N900's going to enter Turkish market after enough N97s has been sold or not while Nokia Turkey clearly points that they won't import. What's really weird is that they're totally ignorant to the high demand.

I guess I could sell really good amount of N900s by preordering (or any possible way) until Nokia Turkey decides to do it; as they are supposed to, not me.

Re: Turkish not supported
 

Benny1967, this is not a suitable place to talk about your political understanding of Turkey as I understand from the few remarks you have made that your knowledge about it is very limited. It is kind of irrational to label Turkey’s legitimate and rational policy about electronic imports as inferior to that of EU. Don’t you know EU is inventing whatever rule is necessary to cut down exports to its market???

Nokia had to be clever and launch N900 into Turkish market from the start. But they don’t know what they are doing. Even the call center of Nokia does not know about the future of N900 in Turkey.

Maybe they think they can’t beat Blacberry and Iphone right now, maybe they are waiting for the next Maemo device to introduce to Turkish market.

Let me say, they are late and mid to high income consumers are buying iphones like cakes. Such a shame for Nokia when Turkish market has always been favouring it.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

Well, how much understanding do you expect to see with no official & senseful reason is announced to Turkish community about why we can't get it, though many smaller markets get it?

It's a shame that Turkish market is excluded from N900 joy, while there are even some lucky markets which has smaller market than the local market of the city I live in (as expressed above, Istanbul has a population about ~15 mil)

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

@God
also Es gibt viele Ländern die das N900 nicht bekommen.ja .klar aber Türkei ist nicht wie viele andere Ländern,nur ISTANBUL's wirtschaft ist wie 13 eu Ländern groß!fast 80 mio einwohner..das heist das ist ein sehr großer markt.
ich glaube sie kennen und wissen über Türkei überhaupt nichts (wirtschaft , potenzial) , .Türkei ist nicht wie 3. welt Länder..
bis jetzt hatten fast alle nokia's türkische sprache,Estonische sprache ist vorhanden obwohl Estonisch nicht unkomplizierter als Türkisch ist.warum ist jetzt türkische sprache nicht vorhanden?
deshalb kann ich nicht verstehen warum diese änderung jetzt ist.....

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

@ God
nicht zu vergessen in der eu leben über 6 mio.türkisch sprachige einwohner!
Es leben in Estonien 1.3 mio menschen!
ich bin in mathematik nicht gut, aber ich meine zu wissen das in der eu 6fach mehr türkisch sprachige leben als die ganzen einwohner von estonien!
daraus lässt sich verstehen welche zahlen vorrang haben.
warum einfacher wenns auch umständlicher geht!!!!
nokia beachtet ein land mit 1,3 mio menschen aber vernachlässigt ein land mit mehr als 75 mio menschen +6 mio menschen die in der eu leben. wie konnte das aus den augen gelassen werden??
welches verhalten kann das rechtfertigen?
sie werden den großen teil vom kuchen versäumen dies wird dann iphone und andere marken einnehmen.

Re: New Copy Of The User Guide Available
 

When I worked in Nokia global logistics, I recall Turkey as being one of the "quietest" sales regions. Maybe THE quietest... no wait, that was Japan (which subsequently lost its Nokia sales office).

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

The N900 has already been formally identified as the new flagship... but your other suspicion about stock sounds reasonable.

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

That's clearly a result, instead of being a reason.

As I said above in post #20, I believe it's Nokia's Turkey office's (will shorten as NTO from now on) fault if competitors break sales record in the same market that Nokia fails though (as I and Cetera expressed) Nokia was strongly favored for a long time.. Possible reasons should be:

- NTO's marketing division is really useless. You can hardly see any efficient advertisements for Nokia products (I don't count boring, unexciting ads) or informative activities from Nokia (just like Sony -not SonyEricsson-, but interestingly Sony doesn't need advertisements as much as Nokia to sell their products)

- NTO's PR division is either unaware of local Nokia Call Center's insufficiency (as stated by Cetera above) or they are aware and don't bother to fix it or they are insufficient to fix it, whatever. I am sure as hell I'll have a lot more information about a Nokia specific issue than any CR answers a call (I've experienced that many times, even had to teach them about some stuff while on call).

- Current official distributors of Nokia suck in a lot of ways, people don't want to buy Nokias to avoid messing with those distributors when they need any technical support.

- Besides all those disadvantages, Nokias are mostly overpriced when compared with competitors.


Turkey feels like an abandoned market for Nokia for a long long time and N900 was the last example proving it. Nokia HQ has to review NTO, if they really want to sell more devices here.

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

After 3 weeks of observing several Turkish forums, now I'm completely understanding why such a decision about skipping N900 for Turkish market was made; our market may not be really ready to buy this (kinda developer centric, experimental) device.

But I'm wondering if we can start community translations somehow since the device is out now?

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

i want this machine.
why are not you sell in suudi arabia?
i want to buy this n900.
sell this machine on there.:mad:

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

I agree with you.There are many people waiting for the phone sales.but you said n900 will not sold in the turkey, and many people are forced to obtain the phone in different ways.so many people prefer not to receive the phone, rather than forcing was received.Nokia mobile phone brand in Turkey is the most reliable.but really disappointed us by not selling n900 in Turkey has suffered.
(I'm sorry for my English :))

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

Hi everyone i'm from Turkey Ankara
Nokia said that N900 wont come to Turkey
At first Turkey is most successful marketplace for Nokia. Every smart phone they produced is sold here in a mad scramble. Why don't you sell N900 in Turkey? In Turkey there are more options for smart phones , pda , android phone. If we choose nokia they have to bring this phone Turkey. We know nokia is trying to catch apple or htc in this marketplace. If nokia want to win this race they have to bring Nokia's most powerful gun. And its N900. But if nokia doesnt bring this phone we will choose other devices and watch nokia's fall in this race :) (sorry for my english)

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

If you can contribute with translating to Turkish, please check this out: http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...8&postcount=21

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

it looks like N900 does not support Turkish sms encoding. when i receive one, it shows all wierd characters. does anybody know a way to read them?

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

i want to say something, there is a fact: China !
Turkey is a big market -someone said i know, and will be bigger in time. if Nokia would go on paltering Turkey market, products made in China will capture all markets incluted Turkey. in the beginning those cheap products weren't quality, but now they can produce cheaper beside high quality product.

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

Nokia has already translated S30, S40 and S60 into turkish years ago. They have just to update the few words between each new release of a phone or system.

With maemo it's completely different, the translation is surely totally different from the one on S60. They have to translate every package in turkish, in a way that's maybe not the way they're used to. Maybe there are technical reasons (as you said, maybe a problem with encoding), so it's possible they don't want to handle too many translations now. Maemo 5 is not really a mass market product. But Maemo 6 will, and for sure they won't ignore half of the planet this time if they want to sell their products.

Re: N900 sales in Turkey & Turkish UI issues
 

maybe it's hard to translate by one by all packages but i think it's easier translating to Turkish than to Arabic. there must be something else.

Re: N900 sales in Middle east & Turkey
 

To Nokia & Maemo,

Plz, Take care of your customers needs & wants, in another word: so far and here in Middle east-GCC also in some countries, there is no arabic keyboard till now??!! WHAT IS THIS!!:mad::mad::mad::mad:

Also, the same issue in other countries!!!!:mad::mad:

So, think wisely,,,

Thanks