Did Elon Musk just upstage Tim Cook’s big iPhone 14 surprise?

The world’s richest human being – Elon Musk, worth an estimated $265 billion – yesterday said he plans to start launching new satellites next year that can connect directly to existing mobile phones on Earth.

Separately, the world’s most valuable company – Apple, with a market cap of $2.7 trillion – is widely expected to introduce a new iPhone next month that can directly connect to satellites.

And the fortunes of some of the world’s biggest wireless network operators have become caught up in this gamesmanship. For example, T-Mobile yesterday said it will support Musk’s satellite plans in the US by allocating a slice of its PCS spectrum holdings to the offering and by rallying messaging providers to the service. Potentially as a result, T-Mobile’s market capitalization passed that of Verizon for the first time ever. As noted by the Wall Street Journal, T-Mobile’s market cap reached $183.68 billion in trading Thursday, just above Verizon’s $183.40 billion.

However, it’s still very early days in the 5G race to space. But the technology’s potential is clearly as tantalizing to investors and company executives as it is to backcountry travelers keen to stay connected in the event of an emergency.

Tim Cook’s Globalstar surprise

Apple CEO Tim Cook has reportedly been working on a satellite gambit for years. For example, at the end of 2019, Bloomberg reported that Cook was personally interested in an Apple research project that would use satellites to bypass terrestrial wireless networks.

Those rumors gained steam last year when TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo issued a note to investors speculating that Apple’s iPhone 13 would feature a “customized” X60 chip from Qualcomm that could connect to Globalstar’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites.

The rumor mill went into overdrive earlier this week when Apple officially announced an iPhone event on September 7 with a space-themed invite teasing something “far out.”

For its part, Globalstar recently announced better-than-expected second quarter results, and its stock continued to climb. The financial analysts at B. Riley Securities believe rumors of a Globalstar deal with Apple are driving investors to the company’s shares. “We attribute … Globalstar’s outperformance to the mystery ‘potential’ wholesale satellite capacity customer – which we suspect is Apple – which comprised $8.8 million of Globalstar’s $9.5 million engineering and other service revenue in the period … Globalstar is marching forward steadfastly with this customer.”

To read the complete article, visit Light Reading.