Eclipsed by France and Ireland, Turkey used 195.7 minutes per month on average in the first quarter of 2010, the report said. France’s average monthly cell phone usage was 249 minutes, with Ireland ringing in at 231 minutes.
The average user of Turkey’s leading GSM operator Turkcell spoke approximately 163 minutes on their cell phone each month. Vodafone subscribers spoke an average 200 minutes on their mobile phones, while callers with an Avea SIM card in their phones spent an average 264 minutes talking on the phone per month.
In the given period, the number of both Turkcell and Avea subscribers dropped, leaving Vodafone as the sole operator observing an increase in its subscriptions. Turkcell lost 2.1 percent of its customers in the first quarter while Avea parted with 2.4 percent of its subscribers. Vodafone, however, registered a 0.9 percent increase in the number of its users. Turkcell remains far ahead of its rivals with 34.26 million customers; its closest competitor, Vodafone, has only 15.72 million subscribers, while Avea has 11.55 million. With these numbers at hand, Turkcell held a 55.7 percent market share, Vodafone enjoyed a 25.5 percent slice of the market pie and Avea’s share stood at 18.8 percent. Overall, Turkey has a total 61.5 million mobile phone users.
The report also said that the net sale revenues of Türk Telekom and mobile operators were up 1.5 percent in 2009 over 2008. In the first quarter of 2010, Türk Telekom logged net revenues of TL 1.81 billion ($1.15 billion), with Turkcell bringing in TL 2.1 billion ($1.33 billion), Vodafone TL 682.7 million ($434.8 million) and Avea TL 647.4 million ($412.2 million).
As of the first quarter of 2010, there were over 7.4 million Internet subscribers in Turkey. The number of Internet users was up 9.4 percent in this period over the previous quarter. In the meantime, over 640,000 people were subscribed to mobile Internet services in Turkey.
