{"id":49812,"date":"2025-01-22T23:48:55","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T15:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/quilty-space-issues-estimate-on-spacexs-starlink-2024-revenue-growth\/"},"modified":"2025-01-22T23:48:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T15:48:55","slug":"quilty-space-issues-estimate-on-spacexs-starlink-2024-revenue-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/quilty-space-issues-estimate-on-spacexs-starlink-2024-revenue-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Quilty Space Issues Estimate on SpaceX\u2019s Starlink 2024 Revenue Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

SpaceX<\/strong>\u2018s Starlink business grew across consumer subscribers, government contracts, and in mobility markets like maritime and aviation, and more than doubled Starlink revenue in 2024 compared to 2023, according to a new estimate from consulting firm Quilty Space<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Quilty Space estimates that Starlink\u2019s total revenue in 2024 was $7.8 billion, compared to an estimated $2.9 billion in 2023. This revenue estimate includes Starlink service, hardware, and Starlink government contracts. <\/p>\n

Quilty Space conducted an in-depth analysis into Starlink financials, which are not publicly reported, so the report is subject to uncertainties. However, SpaceX reported certain subscriber numbers in a December 2024 update, which Quilty Space took into account. The report looks solely at the Starlink business, not SpaceX\u2019s launch business. <\/p>\n

Starlink\u2019s 2024 progress report, reported the constellation ended 2024 with 4.6 million active customers \u2014 more than double the company\u2019s September 2023 report when it passed 2 million. <\/p>\n

Quilty Director of Research Caleb Henry put this subscriber count into perspective, noting that satellite broadband competitors Hughes Network Systems and Viasat had a combined 2.2 million subscribers at their peak around 2020. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat Starlink has managed to do is more than double that market size by itself and across a much broader portion of the world compared to what has done in the past with incumbent satellite systems,\u201d Henry said. \u201cOne of the things that helped Starlink do this, we believe, was their access to a lot more markets, having a global network, and increasingly importantly \u2014 scaling that network by adding satellites with more capacity, boosting their manufacturing for their user terminals, and making the system overall much more available.\u201d <\/p>\n

Despite the growth, it does not match up with SpaceX\u2019s own early projections. In 2015, SpaceX sent investors a presentation claiming that Starlink would have 20 million subscribers by 2022, according to a report from the The Wall Street Journal, written about by Ars Technica.<\/p>\n

Quilty Space estimates that Starlink will hit 7.6 million subscribers in 2025, and reach $12.3 billion in revenue in 2025. <\/p>\n

Quilty Space estimates that 1.2 million new subscribers in 2025 will be from Africa and Asia. The firm also predicts that Starlink will receive market access in India during 2025. <\/p>\n

The firm also estimated Starlink revenue by segment, by analyzing Starlink\u2019s publicly reported government contracts and publicly-reported number of connected vessels and aircraft and subscribers. The Quilty report estimates that consumer services in 2024 comprised 62% of Starlink revenue, while government comprised 28%, followed by maritime at 8% and aviation at 2%. <\/p>\n

Kim Burke, Quilty director of Government Affairs, explained that the team reviewed hundreds of unclassified SpaceX government contracts and subcontracts and separated 220 contracts that dealt with Starlink to build a financial model of government revenue. <\/p>\n

The Quilty report estimates that government contracts contributed about $2 billion in Starlink revenue in 2024, and projects this will reach $3 billion in 2025. One critical contract has been the PLEO contract with the U.S. Space Force, which the Space Force has confirmed Starlink has received the largest share of. <\/p>\n

\u201cStarlink military programs that were previously in trial mode are now gearing up for a full operational deployment. Navy vessels that were trialing Starlink on their ships \u2014 they\u2019re rolling out to full deployment. This shift is set to drive a really noticeable revenue uptick in \u201825 and \u201826,\u201d Burke said, explaining momentum in Starlink\u2019s government segment. <\/p>\n

Growth in Mobility Markets <\/strong><\/h3>\n

In mobility markets, traditional satellite operators are already feeling the impact of Starlink\u2019s entry into the maritime market and in-flight connectivity. <\/p>\n

The Starlink 2024 progress report said the company has connected 450 aircraft and more than 75,000 vessels, including more than 300 cruise ships. <\/p>\n

Firm co-CEO Chris Quilty said that Starlink\u2019s maritime business came as a surprise and outperformed Quilty\u2019s internal expectations, when the entire maritime industry previously had an install base of around 45,000 Geostationary Orbit (GEO) VSAT terminals. <\/p>\n

Quilty said some of these subscribers are from cannibalizing the legacy GEO VSAT installation base, but Starlink is likely redefining the market with fishing vessels, inland vessels, and recreational vessels. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe undertold story here is that Starlink is clearly growing the market, they\u2019re enlarging the pie,\u201d Quilty said.  <\/p>\n

And in aviation, which Quilty Space estimates as Starlink\u2019s smallest market, Starlink has still made inroads with traditional satellite customers like Air France and United Airlines. <\/p>\n

\u201cService level agreements weren\u2019t the gatekeepers many in the IFC market expected they would be,\u201d Burke said. \u201cIt seems like Starlink\u2019s flexible contracts \u2026 combined with installation times, reportedly as fast as 24 hours and fiber-like speeds recorded over oceans on Hawaiian Air flights were propelling Starlink beyond its initial business jet niche.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Quilty Space report estimates that Starlink will add 1,300 aviation terminal installations in 2025. Some planes will have two aviation terminals, so the aircraft install base will be lower. <\/p>\n

Burke commented that service-level agreements for aviation were not the gatekeepers that people expected they would be, and aviation customers have been interested in Starlink\u2019s flexible contracts and fast speeds. <\/p>\n

Yet Burke said Starlink is held back in the aviation market by hub city congestion and capacity constraints, and regulatory access to different markets. \u201cStarlink has flyover rights in about 90 countries, but in places like India, service is still subject to blackouts. That\u2019s one of the reasons why there\u2019s still a strong business case for multi-orbit aviation terminals and a GEO backup, or an air-to-ground [connection],\u201d she said.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SpaceX\u2018s Starlink business grew across consumer subscribers, government contracts, and in mobility markets like maritime and aviation, and more than doubled Starlink revenue in 2024 compared to 2023, according to a new estimate from consulting firm Quilty Space.  Quilty Space estimates that Starlink\u2019s total revenue in 2024 was $7.8 billion, compared to an estimated $2.9 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}