The primary drivers of SpaceX revenue is the rate that they can produce Starlink dishes and then sell the dishes and services to customers. They are at 150k per month now in late 2022 which is 1.8M per year but are increasing the speed of sales. September 25, 2022, Elon Musk tweeted that over 1 million dishes had been manufactured. Elon had said that 500,000 customers were signed up in early June, 2022. This means over 150,000 dishes per month on average for three months. SpaceX will end 2022 with about 1.1 million Starlink customers.
Starlink now has more than 1,000,000 active subscribers – thank you to all customers and members of the Starlink team who contributed to this milestone ❤️💫🌎 https://t.co/5suNxFvtEH pic.twitter.com/E1ojYarcEA
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 19, 2022
They would need to average 450k per month in 2023 to hit the targets in my forecast below. They would need to average 1.2 million dishes per month in 2024. The direct phone revenue is determined by how many cellphone customers choose to buy global satellite text and voice from T-mobile and any other new SpaceX cellphone partners. There are 110 million potential t-mobile customers and 5-10% will likely join different levels of global text and voice with no deadzones.
I think the Gen 2 satellite numbers will be higher in 2023. If there were 5000 Gen 2 satellites then the direct to phone revenue could be $6-10 billion in 2023 and $20 billion in 2024. Any total revenue over $10 billion for a year would mean profitability and a strong case for an IPO of Starlink. The Starlink IPO seems like a Q4 2023 thing based upon progress at SpaceX.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Unsure why starlink is being viewed as consistent growth. While it’s service is great, it is in a very niche ecosystem.
Its utility is only worthwhile to those in excess rural areas, hikers/wilderness, planes, and boats. Due to latency and bandwidth constraints it will not out perform broadband or cellular.
Secondly it may be hit by regulations thanks to the eventual concern of Kessler syndrome. Technically it’s already a concern and a possibility but as we get further along the world nations will take it seriously.
Musk gets to break out the gray suit and white cat again…
Musk also just dropped another 10K+ Starlink terminals in Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s digital minister. Sounds like the EU is paying the subscription fees for this new set.
It’s much more than a regulatory pile on. It’s a loss of faith by Tesla and Starlink’s customer base triggered by his shift to what seems to them to be mental instability and delusional thinking.
Just “defending Free Speech” is very different from the Right Wing Tweets. Retweeting malign disinformation when Pelosi’s husband was attacked, Covid conspiracy theories, repeatedly signaling by using the buzzwords of the extreme right – and avoiding anything critical of even the most delusional Right Wing ideas. These are unforced errors. Half the population perceives them to be symptoms of mental deterioration and instability. That half tends to occupy more positions of authority in government, corporations, universities, media – etc. They also tend to be the people who bought Tesla’s and TSLA stock.
I agree, after all this antivaxx, QAnon etc. nonsense, I am not sure if I am still supporting this guy.
Pending further information about Pelosi, I will concede that one (it was quickly deleted though). On the anti-vax front, I have not followed where Musk has given a stance on that; however, I will say that I have been pro-vax and have all my shots, but those who were anti-vax have been proven to be more right than I would have ever expected. I’m still pro-vax, because I still think it saves lives, but these shots were way over-promoted when it comes to preventing infection.
Can anyone tell me where Musk has said anything qanon or far-right, other than the brief Pelosi post (which I’m sure he regrets)?
I will re-state that most who think Musk is cookoo would have a different opinion if the national news media were not so slanted to the Left, and were reporting on the “Twitter files” in a fair and balanced way. This story will unfold in the next Congress, and I believe will cause major changes to social media, and to the national media – similar to what is happening at CNN as we speak. Then, it will become more apparent why Musk decided to risk so much.
Musk is a weird sort.
He also promoted more than once Universal Basic Income.
He more than once has shown he is not much, or at religious.
He usually has shown he dislikes conspiracy theories, pseudoscience etc.
So his anti-vax stuff was somewhat surprising to me.
But I disagree with you. I have not seen any indication the anti-vax crowd was right about COVID vaccines and MUCH LESS about vaccines in general.
there are plenty of data sets to show issues with covid shots… try looking for sources that actually debate the issues with myocarditis in young men. MRNA technology never worked on animals long term and last i checked we are just really smart ones
“…I have not seen any indication the anti-vax crowd was right…”
Athletes, one example among many, falling out and dying in public might be a clue.
The people who say anti-vaxers, like me, are not following the science are really pushing a fake narrative. I’m not against vaccines or how they work. I’m against the present companies vaccines because they have faulty, defective products. Way back they sent a batch of swine flu out to Eastern Europe. Fortunately, a tech tested the batch on ferrets. They ALL died. Turns out the batch was contaminated with bird flu and would have killed a lot of people. In fact if they were following guidelines there would be no way possible this could have happened. Since then, I quit taking any of their defective products. Even worse, for such malfeasance as sending out contaminated products nothing was done to management.
I disagree. Musk is at the tip of the spear when it comes to many “next big future” subjects. The media is doing the same thing they did to Trump (Oh, I said that name!). I’m just saying that a lot of folks’ angst is based on media noise. Musk is all about advancing technology for the future of humanity, and we who are all about technology advances, should be able to look past all the noise, as Brian Wang is appropriately doing.
You don’t have to agree with him, but I do. Musk is outdoing NASA and many others (by a country mile). He is pushing all the boundaries like crazy. Keep the articles coming!
As for Musk’s political stance, I applaud him for being willing to call out all the hypocrisy and downright illegal things that are going on behind the scenes, in social media, in the FBI, in the news media, and in DC in general. Has he stepped over the line a couple of times? Perhaps, but it just goes to show he is human, just like the rest of us. At least he is willing to put himself out there just like Trump did (oops, I said it again!). You know, the (not currently) richest person in the world doesn’t HAVE TO do that.
But doesn’t the public information that no one disputes justify doubt on these issues?
For example, we can all agree on the time to market of the vaccines, the public statement and positions of health officials over the last 24 months, and the relative effectiveness of vaccines in preventing transmission. And the reasons given for various measures, the funding of various pharmaceutical companies, the nature of what was defined as misinformation over the past two years, and where those issues stand now, matters of public record.
Looking at these alone, individually and against each other, leads to suspicion that is entirely reasonable. And the process of a single government official enacting the measures instituted during lockdown, backed by the force of law, for an indefinite period of time( and in _objective_ violation of the requirements of various state Constitutions that the matter be returned to their legislature after a defined period of time) is an issue that would raise alarm no matter the issue.
I just don’t see the crazy?🤷
Starlink, Tesla, SpaceX, Musk, now Twitter. Brian, what happened to this blog? It was great before Musk era, now it’s kinda boring. News basically about nothing like:
Tesla sold 100K cars, next news…
Tesla sold 200K cars, next news…
Tesla sold 1M cars
Starlink 500k customers
Starlink 1M customers
Musk became Twitter CEO, Musk is not Twitter CEO. Although I am using twitter, it’s just one of many, silly little social media platforms, soon will be forgotten, if it disappear tomorrow, nothing will change, young people don’t care about twitter, new ones(social networks) will emerge soon. This is not futurism.
so much more advanced and interesting things are happening. Just check out r/singularity on reddit.
During last week or so, we had breakthroughs in atomic scale 3d printing, cancer vaccines, AI generating music, aging discoveries like this one – “Aging is driven by unbalanced genes, finds AI analysis of multiple species”, so much more
Agreed. The site has become too Musk-centric. He’s just one of the wheels moving technology forward. There are many more.
Nevertheless that reddit sub is also overly focused and obsessed with generative AI and ChatGPT.
At least it is not a doom and gloom waiting-for-the-apocalypse parlor like /r/futurology, which is practically unreadable nowadays.
Soon novelty will wear off, it was the same story with dalle2 when it was released in april. Now noone is talking about dalle2 there. Dalle2 is ancient and even primitive compared to midjourney v4. People chilling out in r/singularity will soon move to GPT-4, which will be insane.
If you ignore these ChatGPT post, it’s still easily the best place in the web with cutting edge sci/tech news. Best place for futurists, people interested in futurism etc.
If SpaceX keeps the NASA moon landing contract, creates profitable Starlink revenue in 2023 AND can prove Starship capability and viability in 2023-2024, we’re looking at that company staying around as a major global force. I think that, without one or the the other of successful Starlink or Starship this next couple of years, they’re going to start having a harder time.
Twitter was a nice passion project for Elon Musk (and I don’t want to deviate to that, here), but I think he needs to focus on SpaceX and Tesla. Possibly Neuralink, too, depending on what’s going to come of its current debacle.
“Current debacle”; You mean the fact that experimental test animals end up dying? That’s a bit too normal in animal experimentation to earn the term “debacle”, if you ask me.
Seems to be more of a USDA debacle, than Neuralink. But I suppose it will contribute to the current regulatory pile on against Musk for daring to relax Twitter’s censorship.