Flexibility is the greatest driver in the satellite industry. As technology across the value chain has improved, barriers to entry have come down in both manufacturing and launch. In turn, a growing diversity of solutions has, and continues to, come to market, finding new ground by providing customers with more options, through flexibility. This was.
Flexibility is the greatest driver in the satellite industry. From manufacturing to launch, in-orbit to on-the-ground operation, flexible technologies, pricing, and solutions offer diversity and increase the playing field for competition. Yet, more does not always mean better, and the pace and necessity of flexibility can differ widely from market to market, customer to customer.
Software-defined satellites are a growing trend in the satellite industry, especially in GEO. With SES-17’s successful launch two weeks ago, and Eutelsat Quantum as well back in July, the industry is seeing more fully-flexible satellites in orbit.
NSR analyzed various fleet replenishment strategies in the year-end NSR’s article on Satcom 3.0 era, discussing relevance to operator per size and risk-taking ability starting in 2020. The growth patterns look quite different for operators falling between revenues of $100-$300M (low risk), $300M-$1B (medium risk) and finally greater than >$700M (high risk), and thus we began to inspect elements of business models that might be relevant to each category.