What is the Real Market for Turkish OTT Services

TURKEY LOVES INTERNET

Turkey, with the latest figures, has more than 22 million broadband subscribers. Total broadband subscribers increased from 5 million to 22 million in last 5 years. This increase trend shows that Turkey has adapted internet to daily life quickly. There is a high rise in terms of broadband subscribers after the introduction of 3G technology in 2009 in Turkey.

The real question for OTT business is, within 22 million subs, what is the real customer base for online video services?

Table 1 : 2014 Broadband subscribers in Turkey

The table above shows us that there is a steady increase in subscriber base in Turkey. The increase rate is also very high, which shows us that there is premature market conditions in Turkey. In theory, more than 60% increase for year 2011 and passing the 22M subscribers cap in 2013 shows the signs of a highly profitable market with a big potential.

The Real Customer Potential for OTT Service in Turkey

As of year 2014, what is the ratio of real potential customers for OTT services among 22 million broadband subscribers? The answer is a clear “no”. We have to dig into the Turkish Broadband and Broadcast market numbers more to find the real answer.

The graphic below shows the connection type breakdown of the 22 million broadband subscribers in Turkey.

Table 2: 2014 Turkey Internet Connection Breakdown by Type

Mobile connection is the biggest portion in Turkey. The important part of the graph is, there will be double count of unique users who connects to Internet via multiple types of connections. Smartphone broadband subscribers takes the lead by far with 23 millions, and %20 xDSL accounts for 6.6M households. The graph shows the irresistable requirement of a multi-screen OTT service.

OTT and Fixed Line Analysis

2014 Turkish broadband subscribers are ~8.000.000. We need to see the breakdown of the 8M by speed to see the real OTT potential customers in Turkey.

The table above shows the breakdown of broadband subscribers in Turkey. By looking at these figures, we can see the potential and also decide the target segment of the OTT service. For the year 2014, %90 of the fixed line broadband subscribers have the minimum bandwith for such online video service. The biggest Internet service provider service in Turkey is TTNET and more than %70 of TTNET’s customers are using unlimited internet packages. This makes the most of the household broadband subscribers as potential customers.

We will continue analyzing mobile broadband usage and subscriber bases for OTT video services with our following posts. You can contact me via tanil at tivilogy.com for further detailed discussion.