Rumors abound that Apple is interested in satellite technologies, and the company has reportedly spent a bit of money on securing satellite-related talent.
The "killer feature" that I'd like to see Apple implement in its iPhones is truly global text messaging: the ability to send and receive both SMS and text-based iMessages anywhere in the world. That would presumably also include "SOS" messages with geographic coordinates, for example. All at a cost of about $5/month -- and free for a basic SOS service.
Text messaging is a limited bandwidth application that even today's satellite technologies (e.g. Iridium) can support at scale. The antenna(s) would have to be part of the existing iPhone form factor, but that too doesn't seem to be a significant engineering problem within even today's state-of-the-art.
Such a killer feature would continue to differentiate iPhones and would also fit well with the brand. It'd be entirely consistent with the "active lifestyle" image that Apple often conveys -- think mountain climbing and Antarctic expeditions, basically. Such a feature would also be a great fit for the iPod touch, iPad, and even (in the future, as the electronics get better) Apple Watch. Many people don't need or want cellular voice and data. Global satellite messaging would also find a ready audience among the Apple-IBM enterprise customers.
On a $5/month plan SMS would probably need a monthly cap due to carrier charges, but it could be something pretty high like 500 messages/month. Apple might also need to set an overall cap of, say, 2000 messages/month, to keep the satellites from getting too burdened. The free tier could be, say, 20 messages/month. All that'd work.
Let's hope Apple brings truly global text messaging to its devices soon. That'd be really exciting.
The "killer feature" that I'd like to see Apple implement in its iPhones is truly global text messaging: the ability to send and receive both SMS and text-based iMessages anywhere in the world. That would presumably also include "SOS" messages with geographic coordinates, for example. All at a cost of about $5/month -- and free for a basic SOS service.
Text messaging is a limited bandwidth application that even today's satellite technologies (e.g. Iridium) can support at scale. The antenna(s) would have to be part of the existing iPhone form factor, but that too doesn't seem to be a significant engineering problem within even today's state-of-the-art.
Such a killer feature would continue to differentiate iPhones and would also fit well with the brand. It'd be entirely consistent with the "active lifestyle" image that Apple often conveys -- think mountain climbing and Antarctic expeditions, basically. Such a feature would also be a great fit for the iPod touch, iPad, and even (in the future, as the electronics get better) Apple Watch. Many people don't need or want cellular voice and data. Global satellite messaging would also find a ready audience among the Apple-IBM enterprise customers.
On a $5/month plan SMS would probably need a monthly cap due to carrier charges, but it could be something pretty high like 500 messages/month. Apple might also need to set an overall cap of, say, 2000 messages/month, to keep the satellites from getting too burdened. The free tier could be, say, 20 messages/month. All that'd work.
Let's hope Apple brings truly global text messaging to its devices soon. That'd be really exciting.
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