Iridium

Iridium Failure

Iridium was the global satellite phone company that was sponsored by Motorola. The idea was proposed by one engineer was to put up a network of low orbiting satellites covering the entire orbit of the earth and linking them with mesh technology for routing calls to and from any point in the world. Due to a high cost issues, the project the originally required 77 satellites was reduced to 66 satellites (MCINTOSH). Twelve years later however, the company was forced to file for bankruptcy, which resulted to the failure of Iridium.

From reading various papers regarding Iridium history, I attributed the project’s failure to:

* Failure from the company to research its targeted audiences. The phone was too large and heavy, very expensive and due to its dependence to on line-of-sight between the phone antenna and the orbiting satellite, consumers were incapable to use the phone inside moving cars, inside buildings, and in many urban areas (Finkelstein) . The phone cost $3,000 with a plan varying from $3.00 to $7.00 per minutes. Average Joes Consumers couldn’t afford such phone. Consequently, Iridium was force to limit their target audience to business travelers that usually travel to remote area where cellular phone services were yet available.

* The time it took the company to launch its service, about eleven years. By then, cellular networks had already spread all around the world. There were many other company chasing the same customers and offering portable lightweight phones with cheap calls plans.

* Bad execution plan. The company was unable to fulfill orders because the manufacturer couldn’t ramp up production fast enough. It is believed that, knowingly that supplier were experiencing software problems, Management went ahead and launched the service before enough phones were available (Finkelstein).

As the product was moving from concept to full commercialization, Motorola being a supporter of Iridium, failed to attract investors and...