Flat panel antennas are moving firmly into the mainstream, with shipments across aviation, land mobility and maritime projected to approach half a million units by 2035, according to Valour Consultancy’s new report titled ‘The Future of Flat Panel Antennas – 2026.’
The company’s previous analysis, published in 2023, projected flat panel shipments to reach 100,000 by 2030. At the time, 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). But the assessment also uncovered an overwhelming sense of optimism throughout the value chain that LEO was the future of satellite connectivity and that flat panel antennas would benefit.
Fast forward to 2026 and many of the barriers that once prohibited flat panel adoption have now dissipated according to the 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.”
The competitive environment has matured too with more concepts reaching production status. Kearney continued, “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.”
Such is the shift in supply and demand, Valour Consultancy has 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.
Chart – Annual Flat Panel Antenna Shipments by Land Mobility Application
One of the key questions posed to the Valour Consultancy team during scoping for this study was how dominant SpaceX would become in this domain and where the opportunity lies for other vendors and technology. Daniel Welch, who worked alongside Kearney on this report 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.”
Welch continued, “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.”
Valour Consultancy is a multi-award-winning provider of high-quality market intelligence and consultancy services. Now in its second edition , ‘The Future of Flat Panel Antennas – 2026’ provides a comprehensive analysis of forces influencing adoption and an updated assessment of the evolving competitive landscape, highlighting which vendors are best positioned for success. Developed with input from more than 30 companies across the value chain, forecasts include unit shipments and revenue projections across sectors throughout aviation, land mobility and maritime through to 2035. The report consists of 135 pages of in-depth market analysis and technology trends, while market estimates and forecasts are contained in 147 data tables in Excel. Fundamentally, this report is aimed at stakeholders with an interest in flat panel antenna technology and/or comms-on-the-move providing an unrivalled analysis of the market.
Click here to access sample pages, the report information brochure or to request a full copy of the report.