Sources: Apple has a secret team of ~12 engineers working on satellites and related wireless tech to beam data directly to its devices
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
This report closes a two-year loop: back in 2017, sources said Apple had [[a:918357|hired two former Google satellite executives and held talks with Boeing about its satellite venture]], and this piece reveals what that talent went into — a secret team of roughly 12 engineers working on satellites and wireless tech to beam data straight to Apple devices.
The arc since then confirms the program was real rather than exploratory: by 2021 the iPhone work had narrowed to emergency texting and crisis reports in areas without cellular coverage, and by late 2025 Bloomberg was reporting Apple's plans to further enhance satellite connectivity across its products. The through-line is Apple pulling connectivity in-house instead of renting it entirely from carriers.
First-order effects
- A small Apple team now owns the hardware and wireless stack for device-to-satellite links, meaning some data reaching iPhones no longer has to traverse carrier networks at all.
- Carrier partners face a new dependency dynamic: Apple controls both the endpoint device and, increasingly, an alternate path to it.
Second-order effects
- Satellite operators and component suppliers gain a marquee consumer customer whose volumes could reshape pricing for direct-to-device capacity, while rival phone makers are pushed to secure their own satellite partnerships or cede a differentiator.
- Emergency-coverage features become a marketing battleground, forcing Android OEMs to match capabilities that previously required no satellite link at all.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the phone maker — not the telecom operator — becomes the entity that guarantees reachability, shifting part of the value of 'coverage' from spectrum licenses to vertically integrated satellite-to-handset stacks.
- Regulators and emergency-services bodies would then have to adapt to devices whose lifeline connectivity is provisioned by a hardware company rather than a licensed carrier.
The trend: Smartphone makers are building proprietary satellite-to-device connectivity layers, converting coverage from a carrier service into a device feature.