Wedoany.com Report on Feb 6th, SpaceX may be developing a Starlink-branded smartphone to connect to its satellite service. This move aims to help the company increase revenue in preparation for its upcoming initial public offering (IPO).
Recently, the tech world has been stirred up again by Elon Musk's SpaceX. According to foreign media outlet Wedoany.com, SpaceX may be secretly developing a "Starlink"-branded smartphone designed to connect directly to its vast low-Earth orbit satellite constellation network. This strategic move is seen not only as a way to provide users with global connectivity that surpasses traditional cellular networks but, more importantly, aims to help the company expand its consumer business, significantly boost revenue, and pave the way for its highly anticipated IPO plan to attract broader investor attention.
Wedoany.com cited anonymous internal sources in its report, stating that "SpaceX has actually harbored plans to enter the mobile hardware market for years," suggesting the project may have been in the works for some time. However, the story soon took a turn. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk quickly and clearly responded on his social media platform X: "We are not developing a phone." He directly refuted the related reports and accused some media of publishing false information.
It is worth noting that Musk's denial does not completely rule out future possibilities. In fact, earlier, when a user on X inquired about the prospects of a "Starlink phone," Musk left a thought-provoking reply: "Not impossible at some point in the future. It would be a very different device from current phones, optimized purely for running neural networks with maximum performance/watt." This statement strongly suggests that even if such a product emerges in the future, it would not be a traditional smartphone but rather a revolutionary device deeply integrated and tailored for edge AI and localized large AI model applications, with a design philosophy fundamentally different from existing products pursuing general functionality.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding the "Starlink phone," SpaceX's efforts to integrate satellite communication with terrestrial mobile networks are already public and rapidly progressing. The company has partnered with U.S. telecom operator T-Mobile to launch the "Starlink Cellular" service, aimed at providing basic text and even call connectivity to users in signal dead zones. Currently, the service has limited bandwidth and is positioned as a supplement to traditional networks, but SpaceX's ambitions go far beyond this. The company has acquired critical radio spectrum resources from EchoStar and is actively applying to launch more second-generation satellites, aiming to significantly increase the bandwidth and performance of direct-to-phone connections, laying a solid foundation for providing true satellite broadband services in the future. In September of this year, Musk himself publicly discussed the possibility of competing with traditional mobile operators.
Industry analysis points out that if SpaceX does enter the smartphone hardware market, its core challenges and opportunities are equally clear. On one hand, the global smartphone market is highly dominated by giants like Apple and Samsung, with extremely fierce competition, making it very difficult for a new brand to gain a foothold. On the other hand, SpaceX's "Starlink" satellite network is its unique and differentiating asset. If it can be deeply integrated to create a mobile device that truly achieves seamless, high-speed satellite internet access, it could potentially open up a new market segment. However, this field is also becoming crowded: Apple already provides emergency satellite SOS services for iPhone 14 and later models through its partner Globalstar; major U.S. carriers AT&T and Verizon are also collaborating with AST SpaceMobile to test providing satellite broadband services to standard smartphones.
Therefore, whether the "Starlink phone" is an imminent reality or a concept for the future, SpaceX's series of actions clearly indicate its commitment to transforming satellite connectivity from a supplemental feature for special scenarios into a more mainstream, integrated consumer experience. The curtain may already be rising on this connectivity revolution extending from space to our pockets.
