“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to boycott American-made electronics, such as those made by Apple Inc., and offered a rather less well-known alternative to the iPhone,” Nate Lanxon reports for Bloomberg. “‘In Turkey we have Vestel Venus,’ he said on Tuesday, referring to a series of smartphones that retail in Turkey for between about 650 lira ($99) and 2,500 lira, and are manufactured by Vestel Elektronik Sanayi ve Ticaret AS. ”
“A challenge for Vestel will be the fact that its devices are built using numerous American-developed components, including chips manufactured by Qualcomm Inc., a major semiconductor company based in San Diego, California, and touchscreen glass created by New York-based Corning Inc.,” Lanxon reports. “Alternatives to these components exist, and Vestel uses some of them — in a number of its phones, for example, chips designed by Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc. are used instead of those made by Qualcomm. Harder to replace is the Android operating system, developed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which in addition to powering Vestel’s phones also underpin the majority of mobile phones sold worldwide.”
“It’s safe to say that Vestel’s Venus phones — which look a lot like an early iPhone — aren’t among Apple’s global rivals,” Lanxon reports. “The product line had a home-market share of 6-7 percent at the end of 2016, according to analysts at HalkInvest. Apple sold over 200 million iPhones in 2017, almost three-times Turkey’s population.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Erdogan is tilting at windmills.
SEE ALSO:
Turkish president calls for iPhone boycott amid U.S. tensions – September 14, 2018
Turkey sure isn’t ignoring the global bully though. It’s going to be tough for sure but as one door closes another opens.
Road Warrior,
This isn’t the Turkey that Attaturk made. He was born in Europe and pushed his country into the 20th century as a secular democracy (of sorts) with a passion for modernization.
The current president has rejected all A and has been waging war on the educated, religious, and ethnic minorities. His models aren’t what you regard as admirable, but monoethnic Islamic States like Iran. He is a leader cut in the mold of a Putin or Assad, stamping out his opponents and freedom of expression with an iron hand.
Usurper Tayyip is indeed transforming Ataturk’s secular governance into totalitarianism with himself as the top regional emir.
Yes that is what baffles me. I agree with what you are saying about the current political situation and that’s why I don’t get the clash with your country, after all your president seems to get along with others who stamps out opponents and freedom of expression.
Don’t you think the whole tariff situation is a bit of an overkill, over a pastor that is being held there?
After WWII, with its establishment of CIA-based world-wide hegemony, the US has a policy of getting along with any nation that aligned with the US espousing any form of gov., whether it be a theocracy, dictatorship, or true democracy like as long as each toe the US’s imperialist/Capitalist doctrine. Turkey, like Libya, Iraq, and Syria sinned against the US by threatening to move off of the US’s petrodollar which you must know cuts directly to the heart of the US’s being. Others like the small and defenseless Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba, Panama, and Granada rejected Capitalism as was their sovereign right. Bush invaded Panama for a different reason; To eliminate the threat from Noriega who had the drug goods on him. The US turned them into mortal enemies. The US invaded them all as if it outright owned these geographical parts of the world and as if its leaders did not count, as if its peoples were slaves.
So, as you can see, Trump standing up for that Fundie missionary is merely a pretext for retaliating against Turkey for going its own way, aligning in part with Russia and other regional nations.
Thanks for that, got the post WW2 hegemony part, but I’ve always been a little vague about that whole Central-South America deal save for the first 911, 1973.
The thing I like about Trump on the world stage is that he’s got his own style. To pull off meeting with the North Korean guy and a solo one on one with Putin, that’s impressive. That’s what he is good it, and it’s a divide and conquer or a unite and stand, we’ll see what happens. At any rate it’s a fantastic show, I mean they’ll be doing movies about this guy for years to come and translated into all the languages.
I’m not overly fussed with Turkey myself, I tend to agree with the negative commentary as well. I’m just looking for something good from every country that is mentioned here at MDN, and hearing about the beautiful landscape and the brewing of coffee reminds me that even in Turkey there is value.
Thank you for your sentiments sir.
Trump certainly is his own man,…as much as the situation allows him. Aside from fucking with Apple, my main beef with Islamicized Turkey is not trivial vis a vis Turkish style coffee making; It’s its brutal attack against the democratic YPG/YPJ/PYD governance in Rojava, Syria. I am also aware that Israel wants to break up all successful nations in the region like Turkey and Syria and Iran. I looks upon the chaos in Syria, Lebanon, Lybia, and Iraq, and Afghanistan a bit, with prurient glee. Besides, I deplore theocracies anyway no matter where they are.
I hear you. Those traditional nomadic tribes have been at it for years and for the president I think you look at it as real estate, it’s a great place to test your weapons and the buyers are there, what could be better?
American Industry like Boeing (both civilian and military) will be affected by this tit for tat boycotts, and Turkey will turn to Europe for its aerospace needs. Two hot heads fighting each other, better watch it from the fence and not get involved. It be unfair of Turkey to boycott ONLY apple gear and not Microsoft / PC’s, and google. Also how will Turkey ban American brand Jeep which is part of Fiat (European)? As i say, this is interesting to watch
Islamo-fascist Turkish Pres. Recep Erdoğan is privately likely an iPhone gadget user, but he speaks and behaves like a theocratic Mussolini. His governance and monetary policy is irrational; corrupt based on nepotism; His cabinet appointments do not rely on competence but on family ties. I deplore his invasion of Rojava and its horizontally democratic, gender neutral Rojava in N. Syria. He hates its heroic women who defeated his ISIS allies in Kobane.
Over all, his totalitarianism is bad for Turkey. I suspect that it’s leading to an eventual Balkanization of his nation. It feels inexorable, with its parts picked at by surrounding nations like vultures picking at a carcass, and it will be mostly his fault. He must be aware of this scenario but his rigid, inborn, self-destructive nature can’t do anything about it.
Out of his chaos, perhaps Turkish Kurds can finally achieve their own nation created from SE Turkey where most reside.
I am sure that even now he’s transferring billions of his treasury’s liras to some potentially friendly nation to pack his future nest. Any nation desperate for Turkish gold or digital money, or similar apartheid theocratic nation such as Israel could accept him.
You and your writings represent the nauseating quintessential left/lib Pseudo Elitism …resorting to word/term droppings left and right to compensate for your bogus ideology of ‘freeloadism’. ……..
John Dingler, artist can be infuriating, but he tends to his own thinker. He sounds very right wing here, not leftist at all.
ahhh. But have you read his other posts…. mind numbingly left and freeloadist.
Read “today’s post for what it is. Bigots take yesterday’s negative experience with some and paste it on today’s experience.
Dingler is an egalitarian (which is statist at core), but his posts today re: Turkey are informed, specific and rational, imo.
Yes mam ..
But.. my post is about him and in general , and thats not yesterday.
Bigots … what befitting of the left bty. 😉