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last week, apple announced a bundle of new products

• the one that stood out to me the most was the new iphone 14’s "groundbreaking safety features designed to save lives"

enter: emergency sos via satellite

• the feature lets users contact energency services (aka 911) while stuck in areas with little to no cell phone reception

• this is done by users pointing their phones in the sky to quickly catch a satellite

  • this allows their contacts to also track their location while in low-reception areas

it’s tech, but an insurance play

• every time the new iphone releases, personally, i have a hard time spotting a crazy new invention or a game changer

  • but, once again, apple’s put out a bundle of new features that are just enough to get people to be buying again and waiting for the next upgrade

• this satellite-sos feature provides apple yet another edge - the company will start charging a service fee after letting it be free for two years

  • an extra few bucks of “insurance payment” wouldn’t be much of a turn-off for most consumers, while justifying that much extra revenue for iphone sold

• apple's secured the business infrastructure by promising to pay globalstar a "recurring service fee" and to cover 95% of globalstar's capex

others are catching up soon

• spacex and t-mobile essentially announced the same thing in august to end mobile "dead zones"

  • (although apple's iphone 14 will come out in november, while spacex and t-mobile were initially aiming at end of 2023)

• others tapping in the market soon:

  • amazon x verizon

  • ast spacemobile x lynk

i hope i never run into a situation where i’ll have to use the feature though…

💡 something im thinking about

that's all, folks 🐒

as always, i’m no financial advisor! (i’m no substitute for professional financial services)

buy me a coffee :)