For the first 2 chapters of this interview pls click
- Alkım : Vestel is Performing R&D in Many Areas-1
- Alkım : Vestel Will Carry Leadership for the Digital Broadcasting of Turkey – 2
What are the investments of Vestel about Digital Broadcasting? And how much is the capacity?
İhsaner Alkım : Vestel is leader in digital Broadcasting Software Sector with its CABOT R&D Groups taking part in Vestel UK and Urla Izmir. We are planning to be laeader in Turkey as well, by customizing Cabot Softwares for the infrastructure in Turkey. We have a group of 50 people here. The total number is more than 100 with the contribution of the employees in UK. You can figure out our Digital Broadcasting Investment Capacity with these numbers.
Currently, Vestel has the 60% of Digital Broadcasting Market in UK. The software products of Cabot UK, which is a branch of Vestel, are also used by our rivals in the market. Hence, Vestel provides more than 80% of the UK market. At the moment, we are planning to have a revolution in digital braodcasting with a current project which is made with the partnership of BBC.
You have a common project with BBC. Can you elaborate on it?
İhsaner Alkım : UK is the first country having Digital Broadcasting In Europe, it is pioneering other countries. Vestel is the leader in the market with both its software and sofware solutions.BBC has determined to start a project which is expected to change the TV Watching habits of people and it chose us as the work partner. I suppose this proves our situation in the market.
The purpose of the project is to record the broadcasts for one week and to present it to the user with a suitable user interface. We think this is going to solve the prime time problem. Briefly, people will not watch what is given to them but what they want. Or in other words, we can say we won’t comply with the program flow of a TV channel, but the TV channels will comply with our life.
What are your plans about Entertainment Electronics?
İhsaner Alkım : We can classify Entertainment Electronics in two groups as Portable Device and Home Electronics. In Portable Devices, we have softwares and products like Portable DVD Players, Portable Entertainment Devices which have games, media playing and and office applications. But our high priority concept currently is the home-inside multi entartainment systems. Our purpose here is to develop user-friendly and easy to use softwares and products which enable communication among every type of portable device or a personal computer.
Can you give us some information about Unmanned Air Vehicle Project?
İhsaner Alkım : Unmanned Air Vehicle project is one of the projects implemented by Vestel Defense. We have a unmanned air vehicle (UAV) which is designed completely by Turkish Engineers. We can expand UAV concept by adding Helicopter and terrain vehicles as well.
We are in contact with many govermental and military institutions both inside and outside Turkey about the usage of this vehicle. We can maintain the main qualifications like keeping the aircraft fly at the expected alttitude as long as the expected time interval and to record the desired images at the expected quality which are the main characteristics of the product. The Non-Human Aircraft Vehicle, which can easily challenge other samples in the world in its category is a big pride for us, since it is completely developed by Turkish Engineers.
How is the human resources potential in our R&D? Do you make any cooperation with universities?
İhsaner Alkım : Common work areas between university and industry is in a much better situation when compared to the past. Especially with the onset of private universities, the contribution of universities to the industry has been evolving rapidly. In this context, we have given so much importance to establishing R&D centers in metropolitans like Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir where we can easily cooperate with prestigious universities. This is one of the the main reasons why we had established our advanced research center, Vestek in ITU Ari Technopolis.
Moreover, Cabot is positioned in İzmir High Technology Institute and Vestel Defense Industries is in Middle East Technical University. Besides, we are conducting relations with the universities in abroad. Some of the universities that we work together can be listed as follows,
- Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta USA
- Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul Türkiye
- Boğaziçi University, Istanbul Türkiye
- Sabancı University, Istanbul Türkiye
- Işık University, Istanbul Türkiye
- Bilgi University, Istanbul Türkiye
- Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul Türkiye
- Izmir Yüksek Teknoloji Enstitüsü, Izmir Türkiye
For the following chapter of this interview pls click Alkım : Internet will be inevitably go inside TVs
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