IT sector boom ‘a chance for emerging economies’

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Emerging countries have the opportunity to reduce surging costs by engaging in joint technology projects, says BTK chair Tayfun Acerer.

The rapid ascent of the information technologies sector provides opportunities for emerging countries to take a bigger share of the sector in the future, said Chairman of Communication and Information Technologies Authority (BTK) Tayfun Acarer.

Speaking on the second day of 17th Eurasian Economic Summit, Acarer said the trends in the technology sector were shifting from being communication-based toward information-based.
The total revenue of the global IT sector was $1.45 trillion in 2012 and it is estimated to be $1.68 trillion by 2015, according to data provided by Acarer.

But the real point he wanted to make was the trend change accompany that revenue jump.
He stressed that “communication sector’s revenuesare expected to drop so the raise will be accounted by information technologies.” Acarer highlighted this trend change offers great potentials for emerging countries to find place in the new order of the sector, if they could take the necessary steps. “This is a great opportunity for countries like us. The ones benefiting from this will gain,” he said.

“The real opportunity is at the IT,” he reasserted. “They say world population is 7.1 billion but we have 7.2 subscribers to IT services. Meanwhile,3.5 there are billion tooth brushes in the world which means we have subscribers as many as world population but half of the world doesn’t have toothbrush,” he said.

Impact on life

“It has already surrounded to us all and has impact on every sphere of life,” he stated, claiming Internet has been involved in core family definition.

Referring to a recently-released European Union report on Turkey, Acarer gave outlines some of the steps taken by Turkey in recent years. Along with the development of communication and information technologies in the country, he said, the cyber security issues, which are crucial to strengthen country’s network against the risks emerge from highly vulnerable cyber spheres, have not been neglected.

“Turkey has established its cyber security institution this year. National cyber security center has been already active and wide cyber security legislation adopted,” he said. He continued his speech with giving some data regarding Turkey’s ICT development that showed skyrocketed utilization of bandwidth internet and jumping smartphone popularity in the country. “Eighty-three percent of all imported phones are smartphones,” Acarer said, drawing attention to two results of the phenomenon. “Firstly, this leads to incredible rise in mobile data usage as all smartphones are potential mobile computers,” he said.

“But this also means the price we pay for phones rise rapidly,” he added. Therefore, emerging countries, particularly of the Eurasia region could cooperate to reduce those surging costs by engaging in joint innovative projects, according to him.

“We may be forced to manufacture smartphone collectively, we are young countries and there are great potentials.”