Samsung targets satellite-enabled smartphone chips after surprise iPhone 14 feature

Samsung connected Thursday said it has developed a strategy that volition let smartphone users to nonstop information via satellite, intensifying the contention among tech companies to link phones to non-terrestrial networks.

New modem exertion from the South Korean user electronics elephantine volition alteration two-way messaging, arsenic good arsenic the sharing of images and videos. The information is sent to low-Earth orbit satellites successful abstraction and sent backmost to Earth-based stations earlier reaching extremity users.

Samsung hasn't yet launched its outer capabilities. However, the steadfast said it plans to see the exertion successful its Exynos mobile processors, hinting astatine a determination to bring the strategy to its Galaxy smartphones.

Samsung launched its flagship Galaxy S23 smartphone range this period without outer connectivity.

The determination comes not agelong aft Apple announced the motorboat of its iPhone 14 with a diagnostic that lets users alert the exigency services by pointing their phones astatine a outer successful abstraction and choosing from a scope of issues they are facing.

Satellite phones are not yet a commercially mainstream technology. However, instrumentality makers are betting connected the untapped accidental of putting outer phones successful the hands of radical successful distant areas that autumn extracurricular the scope of terrestrial telecoms infrastructure.

"With Samsung joining the party, exigency outer messaging connected premium smartphones is becoming a default feature," Ben Wood, pb expert astatine CCS Insight, told CNBC.

"This underlines the monolithic power that Apple has connected diagnostic adoption. For caller exertion similar this, wherever Apple goes, others follow."

Following Apple's iPhone 14 motorboat successful September, U.S. semiconductor elephantine Qualcomm signed a woody with outer communications steadfast Iridium to bring satellite-enabled chips to Android phones. MediaTek, the Taiwanese chipmaking firm, is expected to showcase its ain mobile outer exertion astatine Mobile World Congress successful Barcelona adjacent week.

Samsung said its exertion was successful enactment with 3rd Generation Partnership Project standards, meaning it volition "ensure interoperability and scalability among services offered by planetary telecom carriers, mobile instrumentality makers and spot companies."

The instrumentality volition besides "eliminate the request for a abstracted high-power wireless antenna spot wrong smartphones," Samsung said. Satellite phones person been successful the works for decades but person not yet taken disconnected arsenic they typically necessitate immense antennae integrated straight into the device.