In a press meeting held with the Galatasary Sports Club on Wednesday, Avea CEO Erkan Akdemir disclosed that within a year, 360,000 people had flocked to open new cell phone lines branded with the emblems of Turkey’s four soccer clubs -- Galatasary, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş and Trabzonspor -- which also provided exclusive club materials to customers. Speaking at the event, Akdemir stated that as the pioneer of such a business model, Avea attracted a tremendous amount of subscribers in only one year’s time, with more than 75 percent of new subscribers carrying their numbers over to these new virtual operators.
Vice President of Galatasaray Sports Club Ali Haşhaş stated that in one year 120,000 people had chosen GSMobile, the Galatasary-branded Avea phone line, and that they hope to reach 350,000 to 400,000 subscribers by the end of the year.
Tunç Berkman, the corporate and mobile virtual network operator marketing director at Avea, stated that one of the biggest problems for operators in Turkey is that subscribers always have a tendency to switch operators but that because this business model was based around teams, fans were less willing to switch operators -- a great benefit to operators such as Avea.
Regarding Apple’s newly released tablet computer iPad, Akdemir revealed that Avea was currently in talks with Apple to bring the iPad to Turkey and use Avea’s third-generation (3G) mobile Internet network.
