As you may have observed during the Apple Event, it will now be possible in the United States and Canada to contact emergencies via satellite from all iPhone 14s. Unsurprisingly, Apple has signed a contract with Globalstar which has several active satellites. Noting that the Cupertino company is interested in satellite connectivity, SpaceX, which belongs to Elon Musk, approached Apple.
Apple x SpaceX?
At a time when mobile operators and smartphone manufacturers are banking on satellite connections to fill in the white areasStarlink, which is a SpaceX service, takes the opportunity to create agreements with the aim of “renting” its satellites to large companies like Apple.
Remember, SpaceX and T-Mobile jointly announced a new cooperation just days before Apple unveils the iPhone 14, this merger between the two companies will aim to include T-mid-band Mobile’s PCS airwaves on Starlink V2 satellites from 2023.
After successful negotiations with T-Mobile in the United States, SpaceX said to itself “and if we did the same thing with Apple which is also interested in this new communication technology?”.
Elon Musk’s firm knows that Apple has already spent a lot of money following its collaboration with Globalstar, we are talking about an amount of $450 million to allow the expansion of the satellite infrastructure, more than 80% will go to Apple’s new partner, but not the full amount.
Last night Musk sent out a tweet claiming that SpaceX and Apple had had “encouraging discussions” on Starlink communications. He merely said he had faith in the intelligence of the iPhone team and declined to comment on the nature of their conversations.
We’ve had promising conversations with Apple about Starlink connectivity. The iPhone team is really super smart.
Of course, closing the link from space to the phone will work better if the software and hardware of the phone adapt to space signals compared to Starlink which purely mimics the cell tower.
Will Apple continue to advance only with Globalstar for satellite connectivity on iPhones? It’s possible, but it’s always better to have a second partner for this kind of ambitious functionality on a smartphone. In addition, Starlink’s satellite network is very developed with important objectives (12,000 satellites in operation for 2025 and 42,000 in the years that follow).
If Apple goes further with Starlink, the deployment of the “satellite emergency” functionality from the iPhone 14 could quickly spread internationally!
We’ve had some promising conversations with Apple about Starlink connectivity. iPhone team is obv super smart.
For sure, closing link from space to phone will work best if phone software & hardware adapt to space-based signals vs Starlink purely emulating cell tower.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 8, 2022