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Ibadan, 11 September 2023. – Euroconsult has presented market insights and space trends that may potentially influence the space economy in the coming year at the World Satellite Business Week (WSBW) conference, in Paris. During the opening keynote speech, Nathan De Ruiter, the Managing Director of Euroconsult Canada, explained the various market trends and the data to support the company’s analyses and predictions.
Sizing the satellite communication market, Euroconsult projects the industry to grow to USD 123 billion by 2032, with videos (USD 70 billion) and data (USD 53 billion) summing up to the total. As of 2022, the market was at USD 107 billion, with Video making the bulk of it at USD 88 billion, while Data satcom services remained the lowest of both at USD 19 billion. The projections show that Video continues to decline as subscribers reduce, contrasting a strong growth in data verticals.
Furthermore, the direct-to-cell market opportunity in the satcom segment discloses an addressable market worth USD 100 billion. The addressable market can count on 5.4 billion people who, on average, spend 1% of their time online and 3 billion people who are still unconnected today. However, there is a lot of uncertainty about how big the market is going to be and how long it will take for adoption. This is because various adoption challenges include affordability of services, service capability, and compatibility with devices.
De Ruiter also explained the paradigm shifts in the market. Looking at satellite operators, most regional satellite operators have now all included value-added services in their portfolio. Furthermore, the revenue mix today indicates another change in use pattern. Wholesale capacity from big operators had previously made up the bulk of revenue. However, the pattern change is evident as wholesale capacity now represents only about 20% of the total revenue.
In terms of data supply, Euroconsult expects it to reach about 200 terabytes by 2028, about seven times more than the current global data supply of 28 terabytes. Despite this, increase in bandwidth decrease demand is not necessarily only a function of increasing the number of users as much as it is a function of increasing the data rate that people can use. Nevertheless, this increasing appetite for satellite capacity will result in significant growth around various data verticals.
