Will 2025 Be The Year Satellite-To-Smartphone Services Truly Take Off?
The Register, Thursday, January 2nd, 2025
This year saw the launch of the first satellite constellations designed to provide commercial services straight to unmodified smartphones, which looks set to become the biggest satellite use case, with the US leading the way on adoption.
Satellite services integrated with terrestrial cellular networks are still in their infancy, but the revenue from these is expected to grow rapidly to reach about $16.8 billion by 2028, according to forecasts by research firm CCS Insight, overtaking satellite broadband and leaving IoT connectivity via satellite in the dust.
Those are the three applications of orbital internet service that CCS identifies, with broadband currently the largest at about $7.9 billion in revenue, thanks to providers such as Starlink.