Turkey has lost access to new smartphones with Android

The reason is a dispute with Google.
Google told its Turkish business partners that it would not be able to support new Android smartphones in this country after the Turkish Competition Council ruled that changes made by Google to the contracts were unacceptable.

In September 2018, the Turkish competition authority fined Google 93 million lire ($ 17.4 million) for violating the competition law in connection with the sale of software for mobile devices. The company was given six months to make changes that would restore fair competition.

The Turkish regulator asked Google to amend all software distribution agreements so that consumers can select various search engines in the Android mobile operating system. According to the source, the demand was put forward by the Yandex search engine.

The changes were made, but on November 7, the council decided that these changes were inadequate to its requirements, since they still did not provide a default search engine choice.

“We informed our business partners that we will not be able to work with them on new Android phones that will be released for the Turkish market,” Google said in a statement.

“Consumers will be able to purchase existing device models and will be able to properly use their devices and applications. Other Google services will not be affected, ”the statement said.