On February 6, in response to Reuters’ report that SpaceX would launch the “Starlink Phone”, SpaceX CEOElon Musk refuted the rumors on social platform X and made it clear that the company is not developing such hardware products.
Musk directly pointed out in response to relevant reports:"We are not developing a phone."He further criticized some media reports for being untrue, and even bluntly said that Reuters was "telling lies."
This response sets the tone for recent market speculation and completely refutes the outside world's claim that SpaceX is currently involved in smartphone hardware manufacturing. Although Musk mentioned in an interaction with netizens at the end of January that it is not completely impossible to launch a device that is "purely optimized to run the highest performance/watt neural network" in the future, he also emphasized at the time that if it existed, it would be an AI computing device that is completely different from traditional mobile phones. The outside world had previously over-interpreted this vague statement as a signal to "make mobile phones," but Musk's latest statement eliminated this ambiguity.
There is an essential difference between the rumors of "Starlink Mobile Phone" and the existing "Starlink Direct to Cell" technology. Currently, SpaceX is indeed actively promoting the Direct to Cell business, but this does not refer to manufacturing new mobile phone hardware, but a communication service technology. This technology allows existing ordinary smartphones (such as iPhone or Android devices) to directly connect to Starlink satellites for text messages, calls and Internet access in areas without ground base station coverage. Musk has repeatedly emphasized that this technology is designed to eliminate signal dead zones and provide communication guarantees in emergencies. It is a value-added service based on the existing mobile phone ecosystem, rather than competing with manufacturers such as Apple or Samsung by manufacturing SpaceX's own brand mobile phones.