486… This number says a lot about Turkey

486 is not the title of a new TV series. It is not the number of a plane that goes to your favorite destination. It is the number of ICT companies listed in Interpro’s ICT 500 list for Turkey this year. This means that there are not enough big ICT companies in Turkey to complete the 500. What is the only qualifier to make it to the list? A company must have a yearly revenue figure higher than 500,000 Turkish Liras, equal to around $250,000.

So, there are only 486 ICT companies in Turkey that are able to generate a monthly revenue of $20,000 or higher. It is just heartbreaking.

How can we talk about developing with ICT when we cannot even find 500 companies that make more than $250,000 a year? It is such a small number for any type of company, let alone for a technology firm. The ICT community should be ashamed.

I am sure the outlook would be even worse if Interpro listed companies that actually made a profit. A developer in Turkey earns around $2,500 per month, minus the health insurance and taxes to the government per worker. So, if any company close to number 486 in the list has more than three developers, it is impossible for it to have any profits at all, even without calculating the rent and other expenses.

In the report, Interpro states that 300 of the 486 increased their revenues compared to last year. However, this also tells us that 186 out 486 companies did not grow, or actually reduced over the last year.

The champions are once more the telecommunications giants: Turkcell, Turk Telekom, Vodafone, etc.
As usual the second tier belongs to the companies that sell ICT-related products.

The services and software companies belong to the third tier and below.

This is proof that, as...

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