Hatzopoulis Shows off New Islamic SIM Card

A Greek engineer has invented a unique telephone SIM card designed especially to meet the needs of Muslim consumers.

The Islamic SIM Service (ISS), designed by Yiannis Hatzopoulis, electrical engineer, 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.

Despite similar SIM cards being invented before, the fact that this one can work on normal phones as well as smart phones is set to make it a big competitor in the African and Asian markets.

Hatzopoulis said 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 said 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.

“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.”  Hatzopoulis added