Tim Cook is reportedly scheduled to travel to Turkey next year for the opening of Apple's first retail store in the country. The store is located in the city of Istanbul, in the Zorlu Center, and is expected to open on February 4, 2014.
But according to a new report, that won't be Cook's only order of business for the visit. The CEO is also believed to be meeting with President Abdullah Gül to discuss a potential education iPad deal worth between $3 and $4 billion...
After Apple back in January flew its vice president for education John Couch to Turkey who meet with the country's president Abdullah Gül to discuss Turkey's $4.5 billion modernization program in which textbooks will be replaced by tablets and chalkboards by electronic whiteboards, a report Monday notes that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan has now visited Apple, along with Google and Microsoft, in order to explore options ahead of the country's impending decision to purchase 10.6 million tablets for education...
We learned in August 2011 that the Turkish government was looking to place an order for 15 million tablets over the next three years in a bold educational project known as FATIH.
The project was supposed to put tablets in over 40,000 Turkish schools and was initially thought to be worth an estimated $1.7 billion.
The country's president even visited Apple's 1 Infinite Loop headquarters last May to discuss tablets and education. We haven't heard much regarding the initiative since, until today's report published by a Turkish blog which claims that several Apple executives met with Turkish president Abdullah Gül to talk the country's tablet project, now estimated at $4.5 billion...