CAIRO: According to the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt, roughly 95 percent of Egyptians are mobile users. This amounts to over 76 million mobile users in Egypt. In order to cater to the increasing number of mobile users in Egypt, the NTRA has decided an extra digit is to be added to all existing numbers. A group of Egyptian inventors developed an application for the Android platform to cater for this change. The application, free for android users, automatically converts all existing contacts with a single click, saving mobile users the hassle of manually updating every number. The change will be put in effect Thursday, and mobile users will have four months to change their contact details before the old 10-digit numbers become inoperable. Android was originally developed by Google, and has since become one of the fastest growing operating systems n the market. The Android is extremely developer-friendly, making it the ideal launch platform for the application in question. Android currently has 40 percent of the Smartphone market secures, and Sony Ericsson has partnered up with the Android Operating System. Their latest Xperia mobiles, the Xperia Neo and Xperia Arc, have been very popular in Egypt. There are currently more than 250,000 free to use applications available in the Android market. BM
