# Gold Apollo AR924

The Gold Apollo AR924 is an alphanumeric one-way pager in a taco form factor sold under the brand name of the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo.
The pager is notable for 5,000 sabotaged units purchased by Hezbollah having been detonated simultaneously on 17 September 2024 while being viewed a few seconds after receiving an apparent message from the group, although according to a statement published by Gold Apollo on their web page on 18 September 2024, they are not the manufacturer of the device used in these explosions, and had instead licensed the brand to the Hungarian company BAC Consulting.

## Specifications

The PC-programmable and hand-programmable pager weighs 90 g, and is 7.3 cm wide, 5 cm high, and 2.7 cm thick. It has four buttons with two-way scrolling, a four line LCD screen, and a removable lithium battery, rechargeable via a USB-C connector, lasting up to 85 days with 2.5 hours of charging.
The AR924 allows the user to store up to 30 messages with a maximum length of 100 characters. Its data transfer rate is 512/1200/2400 bit/s for POCSAG.

## Sales

The AR924 model is not available for sale in Taiwan nor the United States. More broadly, direct exports of Gold Apollo-manufactured pagers from Taiwan amount to some 260,000 sets between the start of 2022 and August 2024 (including over 40,000 between January and August 2024), mostly to the United States, Hong Kong and Australia, according to Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The ministry's figures recorded no direct exports of any Gold Apollo-manufactured pagers from Taiwan to Lebanon during the same period, however indirect exports via third parties could not be ruled out.

## Israeli manufacturing and explosions in Lebanon

Israeli intelligence personnel are believed to have manufactured the pagers that were shipped to Hezbollah included with explosives in the battery.
On 17 September 2024, some 5,000 AR924 pagers exploded almost simultaneously in Lebanon and parts of Syria, at around 3:30 pm local time, killing 12 people and injuring over 2,750. The explosions appeared to be a co-ordinated attack against the Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Reportedly, some 500 Hezbollah members lost their eyesight in the explosions – however, no further elaboration on this number was provided.
Initially-circulated photos of the damaged pagers showed components displaying the logo of Gold Apollo, leading to online speculation that the pagers involved had originated from its factories in Taiwan.
The following day, Gold Apollo founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told reporters in Taiwan that the company did not manufacture the pagers involved in the explosions, but that they were made by its long-term partner, the Hungary-based company BAC Consulting KFT, under a licence that had been in place for three years. BAC Consulting KFT cooperated with Gold Apollo and represented many of its products. However, Gold Apollo did not provide any evidence of the contract. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) visited BAC's official address in Budapest but found only a sheet of paper on the door with the company name; the doorbell was not answered. DW cited the New York Times, which reported that BAC and at least two other shell companies were part of an Israeli front, intended to obscure links to Israeli intelligence officers. The CEO of BAC Consultancy said that they were intermediaries, not involved in manufacturing the devices.