NSR’s Land Mobile via Satellite, 7th Edition (LMvS7), has released, forecasting a $19 billion market opportunity in cumulative retail revenues over the coming decade in the satellite land mobile markets, representing a 69% annual increase in revenues in 2028 generated compared to today’s market. While the traditional market of handhelds has remained slow and steady, opportunities abound in other verticals, including COTP, consumer handhelds, and connected vehicles, all showing greater growth opportunities.
Consumer handhelds will see the strongest new equipment sales over the coming decade, with over 600,000 new devices to come online. This addresses a huge potential market through increased distribution partners and greater presence at brick and mortar stores. “While the satellite industry has typically targeted commercial and government/military applications in land, there remains a huge potential market of consumers that remains relatively untapped” notes Alan Crisp, NSR senior analyst and report lead author. Companies are beginning to realise this, and in recent years competition has ramped up with the introduction of a new range of devices, including the Satpaq, the Bivystick and the Somewear, some of which have even been developed through Kickstarter. While these devices do have lower ARPUs than other commercial products and are subject to higher levels of churn, this category of devices alone represents a $3 billion cumulative revenue opportunity. Once LEO-HTS constellations are fully launched, the satellite industry can also begin to target the consumer even further – through private cars. While NSR has identified professional vehicles and first responders as the initial users of broadband connected vehicle technologies, NSR identified a set of conditions where satellite capacity and FPAs can proliferate in the consumer vehicle space. There is tremendous upside potential to connected cars should FPA prices come down substantially and performance rise, and become line fit in several auto models, which NSR expects by 2024, unleashing an entirely new satcom land mobile opportunity in the years ahead.
