A Spark of Success

During the 20th Century, when the world of electronics was taking its baby steps towards becoming the juggernaut of innovation we know today, one of the industry’s forefathers made a staggeringly accurate prediction. A name unknown to many outside of the tech industry, Gordon Moore observed the forever-upward trend in the tech biz when he stated the number of transistors and components on a chip will double every two years. Over the years, this has effectively come to mean that the rate of innovation and our own technological capabilities roughly double every couple of years.

“Moore’s Law”, as his rule is now widely known, has influenced the technology sector for decades – with manufacturers positioning research and development schedules, growth ambitions and broader corporate strategy on this law. It’s a law not bound by physical constraints or maximums, but rather an observation of how quickly innovation is likely to develop and evolve.

As a huge manufacturer and exporter at the crossroads of Europe, Turkish electronics play a serious role in the innovation of technology across the continent. Across white goods, consumer electronics and the technology start-up scene, Turkish electronics exports continued to see significant growth in 2021 and as we move into 2022.

As a consequence of latent challenging market conditions from 2020 beginning to ease over the course of 2021 with global movement restrictions around Covid relaxing, demand for Turkish-manufactured electronics soared in early 2021.

Consumer durables – typically big-ticket items with a longer product life cycle that the average consumer wouldn’t purchase all-too-often – were a particularly strong growth area for Turkish exports.

In fact, according to figures released by the Turkish Exporters Assembly,

January to April 2021 saw a 57 percent surge in the exporting of consumer durables to an export value of $1.5 billion (compared to the relative time period in 2020) for white goods including ovens, refrigerators, dishwashers and dryers.

Demand for Turkish-made electronics extends into other areas of consumer technology, too, with sales of smaller household appliances including computers, TVs and set top boxes also seeing substantial increases in 2021. Over the same period of time of the first four months of 2021 compared to 2020, sales in of smaller electronic appliances grew 40 percent to $1.1bn, according to Turkish Exporters Assembly.

This demand, as a by-product of Turkish innovation, could potentially yield a positive, cyclical long-term effect, with a boon in tech start-ups rapidly catching the eye of global venture capital investment firms. One major Turkish tech start-up recently hit “Decacorn” status – where Unicorns achieve a market cap valuation of $1 billion, Decacorns clear $10bn – and dozens more start-ups in the tech industry are showing innovative approaches and business models that are gaining traction around the world.

With global exports of high-tech consumer goods already distributing to more than 200 countries around the world, and a start-up scene that’s making Turkey one of Europe’s hotbeds for tech innovation, the future is looking brighter and brighter.