INTERVIEW: Newly appointed Globalstar CEO Paul Jacobs (pictured) warned there could be some casualties in the satellite industry given current high levels of competition, as he discussed the enterprise opportunity it is targeting through a recent partnership with XCOM Labs.

Jacobs believes the satellite sector is certainly a big market, pointing to the high numbers quoted in the past for connected IoT devices.

These figures mean “there is going to be room for a number of players”.

With increasing competition, he believes experience will count for something, pointing to Globalstar’s history of operating a system for 25 years.

It also has some high profile contracts under its belt, including a deal with Apple for an emergency messaging service.

“Globalstar really knows how to do this. It’s not the easiest thing in world to keep your satellite system up and working well. So, I think there’s going to be some fallout in the industry, because there’s so many people piling in right now,” said Jacobs.

When appointing the former Qualcomm chief last month, Globalstar also handed a licensing deal to XCOM Labs, a company founded by the executive in 2018.

Jacobs explained a major driver of the project is to combine a piece of Globalstar’s spectrum, which can be used on the ground for a terrestrial network and improve its efficiency by up to ten-times through XCOM Labs’ technology.

Globalstar and XCOM Labs are looking to develop private networks for warehouses and factories to manage automation, while using satellite connectivity to track goods when they leave the facilities.

“The whole notion of convergence was something that really drove us to do this deal,” he added.

Click here to watch the full interview.