Annual revenues from the global mobile market will top US$1.03 trillion by 2013, when the number of subscriptions worldwide will have risen to more than 5.3 billion, according to Informa Telecoms & Media. From end-2007 to end-2013, the global mobile market will see huge growth, increasing in size by over half (56%), according to the latest edition of Informa Telecoms & Media’s Global Mobile Forecasts to 2013.

The first few pages of the trade publication Digital Ship offers a glimpse of what is on the radar screen of many satcom service providers in the maritime market. In the last few months, vendors have made many announcements about new products and customer wins for either C- and Ku-band VSAT solutions or L-band satellite broadband services.

The satellite broadband sector has gained a lot of ground as there are now approximately over one million individual users worldwide. These are families and small businesses who subscribe to service providers that address the individual consumer by providing a dish, modem and access to the Internet. With the familiar asymmetrical arrangement, these services deliver download speeds between 200 kbps and perhaps 1 Mbps; and upload speeds that hover at 100 kbps as a peak rate.

The current global economic turmoil is having an effect on Asia, but a brief review of history shows that Asia will weather the storm better than other regions and will in fact benefit in several ways from this financial crisis--as well as have a faster rebound.

Three of the satellite based businesses which show continued regional growth are; television broadcasting services (DBS/DTH), machine–to–machine (M-M) services for tracking and monitoring high value assets, and off-shore/remote communication services supporting the oil & gas industry.

Due to a grim economic outlook and substantial currency fluctuations, the telecom services market will generate US$1.4 trillion in 2009, posting only 1% year-on-year growth compared with the 10-11% annual growth rates that have characterized previous years, according to a new report from Pyramid Research (www.pyr.com), the telecom research arm of Light Reading Communications Group (www.lightreading.com ).

by Virgil Labrador, Editor-in-Chief

Beginning with what seemed like another promising year for the satellite industry, 2008 saw the world’s economy go down in a spiralling downturn that brought us into the world’s worst recession since the Great Depression in 1933. They don’t have a name for this recession yet (remember the "Oil Crisis" of the 70s and the "Telecom and Dot.com Bust" of the late 90s/early 2000s). But then again we are just in the beginning of this one. No one can really foretell what lies ahead, but it will almost certainly get worse before it gets better.

World government space program expenditures reached a historic high of more than $62 billion dollars in 2008, with planned satellite launches in the next ten years to increase 38% over the previous decade according to a report released in December 2008  by Euroconsult.

ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré said  that worldwide mobile cellular subscribers are likely to reach the 4 billion mark before the end of this year.  Dr Touré was speaking at the high-level events on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in New York, where he also participated in UN Private Sector Forums addressing the global food crisis and the role of technological innovation in meeting the MDGs.

With many industries around the world in the doldrums due to the current economic crisis, NSR's latest multi-client market research report released December 3rd, 2008 entitled the Global Assessment of Satellite Demand, 5th Edition, projects that the commercial satellite transponder leasing market should emerge relatively unscathed.

With the global financial downturn, satellite companies are always looking for new and emerging markets to sell their products and services.  But with the increasingly global nature of the world’s economies, there are fewer markets left to explore.