Well, it's a little too soon to claim "the rabbit hat is empty."
A lot of smart people have bought into the 40M number, including a lot of the brokers' analysts who are now dissing G*. Not to mention Craig McCaw et. al. who are committing several more B$ to ICO in the hopes of capturing the part of the 40M that G* can't handle.
40M people have been estimated to have the need and the ability to afford portable sat phone service at G*'s price point. I haven't seen the analysis that adds up to exactly 40M, but I remain highly confident that somewhere between 10 and 100M people fit this definition.
The current population of cell phone users is approaching 1000M; meanwhile, the population of people living outside the range of terrestrial communications means is more than 2000M. People, who say, "alright, 2000M people, maybe, but how many of them can afford cell phones, let alone satphones" miss the point, imho. The 2000M people are, well, PEOPLE: they live in the jurisdiction of governments responsible for their security and welfare, they live in locations having natural resource and touristic attractions for non-poor people, they have relatives who have migrated to non-poor areas.....
If .1% of the 1000M cell phone users have sufficient professional or personal needs for wireless communications in the regions inhabited by the 2000M, G* should break even; 1% of that number fills the system to capacity.
And that is not even speaking of the markets in not-poor regions like Canada, Western US and Australia for which mobile phone service can only be economically provided by satellite, or the market among maritime and aviation users for low cost, low latency, hand held user terminals, for which the only alternative heretofor has been Inmarsat, or the data applications.....
I have a lot of problems with G*'s execution of the rollout, with management's inability or unwillingness to provide meaningful, timely progress reports, with the motivation and competency of some of the partners....but I don't have any problem believing there's a rabbit in the hat (or a pony under the manure, as Ronald Reagan would have said). |
