China’s Satellite Navigation Industry Develops with Wider Industrial Ecosystem

As a satellite navigation system independently developed by China, the BDS serves as the core application of the Chinese satellite navigation and location service industry. At present, China’s satellite navigation and location service industry is developing with stable and rapid growth, accompanied by further expansion in industrial ecosystem and continuously optimized industrial structure. As efforts are made to deepen industrial applications nonstop, application scenarios have also been enriched.

Therefore, China’s satellite navigation and location service industry, which gives priority to BDS applications as the core, has witnessed further expansion in industrial ecosystem. The dynamic driving force of new infrastructure and the digital economy has accelerated the integration of BDS into the construction of infrastructure in the fields of communications, transportation, electricity, water conservancy, and other industries. A good number of new applications, businesses and models within the industry and across regions have presented a favorable trend of robust development. Emerging informatized and integrated user units have sharply increased their purchases of BDS-related components, software and data, especially homemade terminal products.

The steady growth of market demand will help boost the continuous development of BDS when it comes to the scenarios for digital application. In terms of smart phones, popular mobile phones with the BDS-3 short-message communications capability are about to be rolled out, which are expected to enjoy the BDS-3 short message and mobile communication services “without the change of the SIM card or the mobile phone number and without the help of any additional equipment.” As for the “intelligent transportation” application scenario, China has further advanced the coordinated development of the “BDS + Intelligent Connected Vehicles” model by naming 16 cities as the pilot cities for the coordinated development of smart city infrastructure and intelligent connected vehicles. BDS chip-level high-precision positioning will be applied in mass consumption represented by sharing travel more rapidly and widely.

The innovation of industrial technological system and application models will take the initiative in pushing forward the “BDS +” integration and innovation and the development of “+ BDS” space-time application, based on which application integration and innovation of BDS with informatized and intelligentized systems in all walks of life can be realized. In the meanwhile, in the market for the BDS industry and the broader market for mass consumption, the trend of the development of BDS applications toward standardization and ubiquity has come into being, giving rise to various new applications, business forms and models without stopping.

During the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan period, China will further advance the development of BDS toward standardization and ubiquity to give full play to the role of BDS in providing ubiquitously accurate time and space information services as an independent time and space benchmark. Moreover, efforts will be made to vigorously promote the extensive application and in-depth integration of BDS in key industries such as energy, communications, finance, civil aviation, railways, water transportation, and sanitation and health and push forward the expanded application of BDS in the public domain and Internet location services, so as to truly realize the large-scale and market-oriented development of BDS application services.