Apple Buys Satellite Capacity, Apple and Starlink, Apple’s Satellite Ambition (Daily Update)
Hello everyone.
Happy Thursday.
One quick update regarding Dark Sky, the popular paid iOS weather app acquired by Apple in 2020.
The app will be shut down on January 1st, 2023. The following message is now posted within the app:
Apple's acquisition set off a wave of worries and angst in weather app land. Check out the daily update from April 1st, 2020 for my detailed thoughts on the acquisition.
Since then, Apple announced that it was including Dark Sky’s tech within its own weather app while making the Dark Sky API available to third-party app developers via WeatherKit. This matched my expectations for what Apple would do. Dark Sky is looking like a very intelligent acquisition at what was likely a very attractive price.
Apple Buys Satellite Capacity
“Apple Inc on Wednesday selected Globalstar Inc as its partner for a feature that would allow iPhone 14 users to send emergency messages from remote locations.
The tech giant said it was dedicating $450 million from its advanced manufacturing fund toward satellite infrastructure to support the feature. GlobalStar will receive the majority of the funding, but the iPhone maker did not specify which other players will receive the rest and in what form.
While Apple will pay for 95% of the approved capital expenditure for the new Globalstar satellites needed to support the service, Globalstar said it would still need to raise additional debt to construct and deploy the satellites.
Globalstar, which makes low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites, said it had tapped investment bank Goldman Sachs & Co and expects to complete a financing in the fourth quarter of 2022.
LEO satellites operate 36 times closer to the earth than traditional ones and hence take less time to send and receive information, leading to faster broadband service even in remote areas."
According to Globalstar, which has dozens of LEO satellites and 24 ground stations, its deal with Apple is “transformational.”
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