Market intelligence and consultancy services company Valour Consultancy has released a new report titled ‘The Future of Flat Panel Antennas – 2026’.
The company published a similar report in 2023 which projected flat panel shipments to reach 100,000 by 2030; however, most antennas were yet to enter early-stage production, the competitive environment lacked maturity and there was still a level of caution amongst end-users around the benefits of Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
The new report looks at how many of the barriers that once prohibited flat panel adoption have now dissipated, says report’s co-author, Arabella Kearney.
“Confidence in LEO connectivity has increased substantially, to the extent end-users now prioritise solutions that deliver low latency, resilience and redundancy. The price of hardware has also fallen dramatically thanks to continued advances in the semiconductor space, as well as better economies of scale in production. This has allowed the ARPU to fall to a level that has expanded the addressable market in both the land mobility and maritime sectors earlier than expected.
“SpaceX, Intellian, Kymeta, Thinkom, LiteComs, ALL.SPACE, Requtech AB and Gilat Satellite Networks are all actively shipping to customers at the time of writing. But with so many antenna manufacturers in the development race, the fight to succeed is fierce, made harder by the dominance of SpaceX and the threat of new entrants. This has forced M&A activity to rise, with BAE Systems acquiring Ball Aerospace, Gilat Satellite Networks acquiring Stellar Blu for its SideWinder solution and Thales S.A. acquiring Get SAT.”
Valour Consultancy has now increased its initial projections, indicating flat-panel shipments to COTM applications are on course to reach almost 500,000 by 2035, with land mobility emerging as the fastest growing vertical following a relatively slow start.
Daniel Welch worked alongside Kearney on the report and believes the future lies in more open, multi-network hardware. “Sovereignty and redundancy are two themes that dominated discussions with end-users and service providers throughout the fieldwork. Both factors are expected to drive adoption of hardware capable of connecting to multiple networks rather than becoming reliant on a single network.
“We can see this theme emerging in parts of the COTM sector today. In the maritime sector, for example, cruise liners have installed multiple connectivity systems on a single vessel supported by advanced traffic management solutions. The preference amongst decision makers in the military sector appears to be toward hardware capable of connecting platforms to multiple networks too, rather than just a single LEO or GEO vendor.
“Our belief is that whilst LEO-only dominates the aviation sector right now, a desire for improved redundancy will cause airlines to follow suit. There is still plenty to be excited about for vendors looking to enter this space.”
