Forecasts Compared and Setcoin Scenarios
How large will the direct-to-device market be, and why do published forecasts disagree so widely?
Chapter summary
Published forecasts for 2030–2035 range from a few billion dollars to nearly $30 billion a year of D2D revenue, and from tens of millions to over 400 million monthly users.
Key takeaways
- 1
Omdia has forecast about $12 billion of revenue and 411 million monthly active users by 2030; SatNxt about $27.7 billion by 2035; NSR more than $60 billion cumulatively over a decade.
- 2
The disagreement comes from three definitions: whether a "user" is anyone whose phone connected once in a month or someone who pays; whether revenue includes the value of D2D bundled in mobile plans; and whether IoT and government are counted.
- 3
Setcoin's scenarios separate these: our base case is about $9 billion of attributable D2D revenue in 2030 rising to about $20 billion in 2035, with a low case of roughly half and a high case of roughly double.
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