Source URL: http://www.fortunegreece.com/article/o-ellinas-pou-vazi-se-taxi-ti-thriskeftiki-zoi-ton-mousoulmanon/

STARTUPS

The Greek, who puts Muslims' religious lives in order

Editor: Kostis Christodoulou14/10/2013 02:54:55

Yiannis Hatzopoulos, creator of the new sim card addressing the Islamic world, talks to FortuneGreece.com

Being a religious Muslim is hardly a simple thing. You must pray five times a day; prayer times change daily, depending on your location, the date and the religious group you belong to, while being expected to be facing Mecca during your prayer session. Yiannis Hatzopoulos, graduate of Aristotle University, has recently created a new SIM card, which will work on practically all mobile phones and significantly facilitates the everyday religious practices for Muslims.

As he explains, it all began in the 2009 Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, wherein a casual conversation, the forty-year old engineer from Thessaloniki was informed of the market success of LG's Islamic mobiles.

Read more: Can Egnyte bring "revolution" in the cloud;

These devices – having reached their second generation by 2009 - beyond offering prayer verses from the Koran, offered various services that were associated with the daily life of any religious Muslim. Originally out of curiosity, and subsequently seeing this product space as a possible business opportunity, he started evaluatingthe market.

The LG Islamic devices, which at the time were selling for more than $200, had received considerable market acceptance in both the Middle East and Asia.

Today 1.5 billion Muslims live on our planet. Muslims use around 1 billion cheap second generation mobile phones (feature phones) , the majority of which come with prepaid connections. Having had several years of experience in designing simcard apps, and having worked with Gemalto productware, a world SIM leader with a market share of 60% (quite astonishingly 3 billion sim cards are sold each year) -- he decided to design a new sim card that would offer similar services to the onesavailable on Islamic mobiles. Simply, and without requiring additional cost, any

cellphone could be converted into an Islamic phone, through the instant swap of its sim.

Read more: Here comes the Discoveroom!

In 2010, he launched the effort of creating a working model for a sim card addressed to religious Muslims, pitching the idea initially in Nice – Sophia Antipolis science park, and then shifting dev work in Thessaloniki. He presented the idea to several sim production companies along the way; indeed the idea attracted attention of Bluefish Technologies, a Danish sim manufacturer, and for a period of eighteen months he worked on the refinement of the product.

The technology development and mainstream engineering work was executed in Thessaloniki, where the creative hub of the startup was located; with the tech assistance of Bluefish engineers from the exotic Mauritius, which was the site where initial small scale sim tests on the local mobile network were executed.

The business proposal is now ready and a little less than a month, on November 12, along with Bluefish Technologies, the sim will be presented at this year's AfricaCom event, Cape Town South Africa, showcasing the card's capabilities live over roaming.

Typical features of Islamic SIM (ISIM) involve the provision of information about the direction to Mecca, special ring-tone alerts for the Islamic prayer time and automated barring of incoming calls during prayer sessions . This last service is one of the "hard cards" of having an Islamic mobile, or in fact this new sim card.

Read more: The Warply changes the rules of mobile marketing

According to Mr. Hatzopoulos "in addition to being considered an " invalid act " to break a prayer session, a large part of the Muslim population worldwide is engaging in the manual process of shutting-off the cellphone several times a day due to praying; thus quite likely to forget to turn it back on, following the prayer, and thus possibly missing incoming calls... This is a service that applies especially to countries with mixed religious populations, like India, where Muslims are a minority - about 200 mil - and of course the rest of the population cannot follow touch with the Muslim program of prayers, thus causing disturbance to Muslims. " The system is complemented by ancillary services, such as Islamic calendars, reception of verses from the Koran, etc.

The core of this technology is based on embedded software, which functions

within the SIM card and is independent of the user's phone. The aim is to attract mobile operators who in turn will use it as a marketing tool to recruit new customers . At this point, it is worth mentioning that in both markets, such as Africa and Asia, prepaid connections, with high mobile network churning rates are predominant, depending on pricing or other incentives offered by competing network operators.

The journalistic curiosity led us to inquire whether Yiannis encountered problems in promoting the product, as he did not stem from a Muslim country or background. "To my surprise no" was his answer, admitting that he was skeptical and apprehensive on how Muslims would deal with him and his applications. "At first I tried to keep a low profile, but that changed when I started receiving compliments from Muslims on my business initiative."

TAGS

• SIM • Yiannis Hatzopoulos • Mobile phones • Muslims