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Jarno Majava, director of connectivity products for satellite cellular handset developer, Elektrobit, predicted that the cellular market would not be affected by the economic crisis because consumers view cell phones as a utility in the same way they view electric or gas heating for homes. Majava said he was excited about the opportunities in his market. “The demand is clearly there for these services,” he said. “Developing handsets to meet the needs of the consumer using lighter materials and better technology is an exciting project to work on, and I look forward to developing our concepts in the new year.”
ComDev CEO John Keating said 2009 would mark the beginning of new direction for his company. “What excites me most about the coming year is our foray into the microsatellite business,” he said. “We have invested several million dollars in developing some discriminating technologies and capabilities. We built and launched our first satellite in seven months, and it has surpassed all of our expectations. We are establishing some important alliances and partnerships. We think the value proposition for well-designed and well-built microsatellites is very compelling to government customers.” ComDev told investors to expect a 10 percent increase in revenues in 2009.
Arianespace President Clay Mowry made an interesting prediction about the U.S. digital television switchover scheduled for Feb. 17. “We see the changeover from analog to digital broadcast services in the United States as a bellwether for the media and entertainment industries that will usher in increasing amounts of high-definition (HD)programming carried over satellites,” he said, echoing the sentiment of several executives who told Satellite News that they believe HDTV would carry broadcasters through a tough year.
Mowry also discussed what excites him in the launch sector. “For 2009, we are excited on several fronts. We will complete the launch pad for Soyuz flights from French Guiana and are working toward a maiden launch late in the year. Arianespace will also be launching TerreStar 1, the largest commercial satellite ever built,” he said.
Sara Poulton, senior director of marketing of satellite imaging company DigitalGlobe, said her company’s 2009 excitement could be summed up with one satellite — WorldView-2. “Nations will use the WorldView-2 digital imagery library as defense intelligence and business advancement tools, as it will reveal the world’s terrain and environment as it has never been seen before,” she said.
For the imaging sector as a whole, Poulton sees long-term growth opportunities with a devoted consumer base. “A whole new generation is growing up with the expectation that world imagery is available at their fingertips, whether that is a portal or a social networking proximity site or their iPhone,” she said. “Even today, we see the idea of search shifting to a location starting point with over 80 percent of Web pages having some type of geographical reference. Online mapping applications supply one part of that online visual context, but world imagery is the real perspective that users are coming to rely upon as the de facto gospel of location information.”
A year of predictions
Over the past few months, analysts have given Satellite News their predictions to calm the fears — and sometimes raise the alarm — for satellite executives. Here is a collection of some the most poignant assertions we have featured in our stories.
“Long term customer base and strong engineering capabilities are qualities that investors are going to look for in the ATC (ancillary terrestrial service) market. I think ATC is a solid sector. The companies that have been around in the sector are the ones that are going to survive – the Dish Networks and the DirecTVs.” — Mike Cook, senior vice president of Hughes Network Systems.
“2009 prospects are dominated by the overall credit and liquidity crisis and transactions on that scale are unlikely. The debt markets that provided critical finance for the private equity acquisitions into and exits from the [fixed satellite services] sector are closed, and that sector is — but for regional players and an interesting hypothetical tie-up between Eutelsat and Telesat — already consolidated. Some of the MSS (mobile satellite services) players may seek consolidation for want of independent finance even without Harbinger Capital action. The MSS sector is divided into those businesses predicated on the rollout of ATC and those that are not, and with ATC still an unproven market and no strategic terrestrial telecommunications operators yet bought in, consolidation in the tighter financing environment may be in order.” — Owen Kurtin, principal, Vinland Group
"Before 2008, the IPTV operators’ emphasis had been to spread their footprint and effectively provide a ‘me too’ solution to cable and satellite. In the future, especially in the developed markets, we will see an emphasis on innovation and differentiated pay-TV services." — Elroy Jopling, analyst, Gartner
"There is no doubt that with its enormous population and ethnic diversity, skyrocketing cell phone and pay-television subscribership, and proactive government efforts to bridge the digital divide in the country, China could offer the most potential for new satellite transponder demand in all of Asia." — Patrick French, analyst, NSR
“You have crises in the world, which means people are watching TV. It means that transmission applications will stay in the market. We don’t see a recession with these types of applications. In addition, due to the fact that governments are looking for cash and money, they could decide to sell frequencies in advance to have the money. The analog switchover could be accelerated. People will have to move from analog to digital quicker.” — Serge Mal, executive vice president and general manager, TeamCast
“I continue to believe that you will see the proliferation of IPTV. The digitalization of video and the encapsulation of video in IP, which permits transmission by any number of different routes, is certainly going to grow around the world in the next few years. There are a lot of advantages to IP coding of video in terms of compatibility, flexibility and storage.” – Robert Bednarek, CEO of SES Americom-New Skies
“Even though the nature of the government’s use of satellite capacity is going to shift as the nature of their operations change, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is going to be reduced. As [the U.S. military] shifts from boots on the ground to eyes-in-the-sky operations, they may shift away from using certain kinds of terminals, but they do not reduce the amount of bandwidth they will need. They will most likely increase it as they need more bandwidth for everything from high-definition video to unmanned aerial vehicles to more different kinds of users.” — Andrea Maleter, technical director, Futron Corp.
“We are heading into a nuclear winter of funding. $1 trillion of funding has been wiped out. $15 trillion of lending capacity has disappeared. Any business plan that your company had four weeks ago needs to be thrown out the window. Credit is going to be tight, and in order to gain stock share, smaller players need to spend on an excess of scale. In an environment with tight credit, smaller players die. There needs to be drastic change.” — Craig Moffett, managing director, Sanford Bernstein
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