[nelsonic]

Clearly Apple Execs either are being myopic about investing in space/satellites or they know something we don’t about launching future sats that make Globalstar partnership obsolete … They could be working on their own constellation and launching with SpaceX to tightly integrate the whole stack.

[contingencies]

The immense political and economic inertia is to keep mobile phones as profitable federal.gov.<your-country> surveillance-accessible tracking / identity / payment devices for the general population. Governments have seen Musk play in politics. Nobody political can trust commercial satellite networks to support them in conflict resolution or domestic enforcement. That means they'll regulate against them as a national security threat wherever possible.

Besides, satellite is generally slower/less economic/less feasible with a tiny portable handset due to technical reasons (eg. distance even @LEO, lack of a directional antenna) so IMHO emergency satellite SMS has to date generally been a fudge-feature (mobile phones use them to make sales since they're ~similar since ~2010, this one is perhaps targeting the 'concerned parent powered purchase').