The document discusses an Islamic SIM service being showcased in Africa. The service, designed by a Greek engineer, allows users of basic phones to track the direction of Mecca, receive prayer times, and automatically reject calls during prayers. It will be shown at Africa Com in Cape Town. The SIM aims to bring Islamic functions to basic phones across Asia and Africa, where many cannot afford specialized phones but networks are not upgraded for apps. Mobile operators may offer it as a subscription or see increased messaging revenue from users.

1. Islamic SIM to be showcased in Africa | The African World
http://www.theafricanworld.tv/2013/11/06/islamic-sim-to-be-showcased-i...
Wednesday , 22 January 2014
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A new SIM-based application designed to offer a range of functions to
users of even lower end feature phones will be showcased at Africa Com in
Cape Town next week.
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The Islamic SIM Service (ISS), designed by Greek electrical engineer
Yiannis Hatzopoulis, enables users to track the direction of the Kaa’bah,
receive accurate prayer timing, convert dates between Gregorian and
Arabic calendars and automatically ban incoming calls during prayer time.
The SIM will be showcased at Africa Com in Cape Town from 12 – 14
November.
Hatzopoulis says the Islamic SIM Service is currently under scrutiny by
mobile operators in several countries, but that it would be premature to
speculate on its distribution in Africa.
He says the ISS came about after he noted the success of LG’s Islamic
phones in 2009, and saw a gap in the market for good Islamic services
running on generic feature phones. He says: “I realised that I could pack
most of the functions of an Islamic phone inside a SIM card, to turn any
casual feature phone into an Islamic phone, simply through the swap of its
SIM card.”
He says he elected to release the functionality in a GSM SIM rather than a
smartphone app, because around a billion GSM feature phones are in use
in Asia and Africa, due to their low prices, long battery lives and ease of
use.
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“Also, there are places where the networks have not been upgraded to 3G,
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2. Islamic SIM to be showcased in Africa | The African World
http://www.theafricanworld.tv/2013/11/06/islamic-sim-to-be-showcased-i...
which can support a functional smartphone with Islamic apps; and in most
places prepaid connections and high churn rates exist. The SIM is cheap,
so this type of product offering could be used as a utility gadget by mobile
networks, to attract those users that could not really afford an Islamic
phone or smartphone, but would find it convenient to introduce Islamic
features in their existing GSM phones,” says Hatzopoulis.
The concept prototype was submitted to SIMagine, a development and
business plan contest event run by SIMAlliance (www.simalliance.org) in
2010. The project won a Best Mobile App award that year, which
subsequently led to contacts with SIM manufacturers, who eventually
provided resources to build the first network connected samples for market
evaluation.
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Hatzopoulis is now working with leading manufacturer Bluefish
Technologies on the project.
“This SIM basically offers on plain-vanilla feature phones what you get on
an Islamic phone/smartphone, minus the Quoran text. We get a dial-aQuoran voice recital instead with the SIM.”
The service is location independent and enables the user to find the
direction even when roaming, with the new prayer times and direction
automatically calculated and sent to the subscriber vie SMS or MMS.
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He notes that not only can operators generate customer loyalty through the
service, they can also offer it as a subscription service or increase ARPU
due to the increased SMS usage.
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