China’s GPS rival BeiDou prepares to take off as Beijing moves to strengthen home-grown satellite navigation
- Chinese satnav industry hits US$74 billion output, has 20,000 market entities and employs nearly 1 million people: report
- During Vladimir Putin’s visit to China last week, Beijing and Moscow vowed to strengthen cooperation applying BeiDou and Russia’s GLONASS system
The value of China’s satellite navigation and location-based services reached 536.2 billion yuan (US$74.2 billion) last year, an increase of 7.09 per cent on 2022, according to a white paper released by the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location Based Services Association of China (GLAC) on Saturday.
The industry, which centres on the BeiDou navigation system – China’s equivalent of the US Global Positioning System (GPS) – has covered a wide range of sectors, from chips and devices to algorithms and data. It has grown steadily in recent years from 12.7 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion) in 2006, according to the report.
With the gradual recovery of economic development, digital transformation and intelligent upgrades in various industries, the demand for satellite navigation equipment and space-time data also soared last year, the report said.
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China launches last piece of BeiDou Navigation Satellite system into orbit
There were 20,000 market entities in the sector that had created jobs for nearly 1 million people, the report said.
“It is expected that the sector will get back to the fast track of development in coming years,” it said.