> The comment that the bulky handset killed Iridium is only part of the picture. The bigger issue is that terrestrial cell antennas went up faster than Motorola

> The comment that the bulky handset killed Iridium is only part of the picture. The bigger issue is that terrestrial cell antennas went up faster than Motorola expected A large percentage of those terrestrial base stations were built and sold by Motorola; they did pretty well overall. During that period of time, Motorola had low base station market share in the US and Europe - almost all of their business was in the locations that Iridium was built to serve. The experience in designing, building and maintaining a large array of satellites (in Arizona, I think) most likely paid for itself in government contracts many times over.