>Globalstar thinks about 6 million subscribers after about 5 years
>though this figure is a wild
>guess because it depends on how many fixed phone boxes there are in
>Chinese towns and elsewhere.
Wild guess indeed.
So G* "thinks about" 6 m subscribers after 5 years? Why don't they "think about" 20 m customers in the same period. I can easily "think about" even 30 or 40 m subs. When I was younger, I once "thought about" as big number as 50 m, shortly, before lapsing back to the sub-40 m figures.
Seriously speaking, how large a market the G* "thinkers" "think" there is for satellite phones after five years? Are they still "thinking" about the international business traveler as the target segment? This window of opportunity is closed. Nobody in Europe is buying it for starters. Why should they? GSM works and roams practically everywhere in seconds after you step off the aeroplane. It offers unsurpassed quality, incredible selection of handsets and features, long stand-by times, and very competitive pricing.
I* has publicly disowned the international business traveller segment myth. They go for the oil drillers, polar bear hunters, around-the-world-in-a-balloon crowd, all five of them, very important segment, Paris-Dakar rally teams, the manufacturer backed ones who did not have to buy their shock absorbers second hand from Pablo, as well as the Rub-al-Khali Camel Rough Riders (sponsorship by the Saudi Royal Family).
So who's saying there's no market for the satellite phones?
However, G* finding 6 m of them in 5 years, and providing that it is not the only system on the market we should have at least, the very minimum, of 12 m satellite phone users around. This might be a little bit pushing it, especially considering the fact that by that time the coverage of the terrestial cellular covers every Bubba's trailer in Alabama. Even.
- rajala
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