Apple may not be the first company to think of the vast skies and how they could be useful for its business, but that is now changing. According to the latest reports, Apple has created a team that would be checking the possibility of beaming internet signals to iPhones directly from earth-orbiting satellites, thereby getting rid of the common cellular data providers across the world. The news was reported by Bloomberg, which is claiming to have talked to people familiar with the project. The project as such is expected to create fruitful results in the coming five years.
For a company that has tried to revolutionize every field it has touched, the move does not seem unlikely of Apple. In fact, the tech giant had managed to remove intermediaries from its business for a long time and it has huge plans for the future. If the engineers that have been put together turn the project into something super-useful, the end-product would be an iPhone that can offer data connectivity, if not calls, through just a satellite connection. The report also claims that, as much as the project could be dropped, Tim Cook is so interested in the new project.
There are a few questions that still need to be answered by the company. For instance, it is not clear whether Apple will be following the path SpaceX and deploying its own set of satellite networks to the space. It might also make use of the existing set of satellites for transferring data — and this could be bothering the scientific community less, as it does not add to the constraints in space observation. All these questions, however big or small they are, could be answered only when the company finalizes and announces the project, and this could take up to five years.
