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Sylvia Ma

China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system – its home-grown alternative to the US-run Global Positioning System – has been adopted in about 90 per cent of “key industry” applications nationwide, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
In a social media post on Wednesday that also reposted a report by state broadcaster CCTV, the ministry said BeiDou’s comprehensive application penetration rate across key industries had reached about 90 per cent. Further detail on which sectors constituted “key industries” was not provided.
In its post, the ministry said it had launched a pilot programme in 2024 to promote the large-scale application of BeiDou across the Chinese economy.
In the first half of this year, 39 cities taking part in the pilot programme had added 2.96 million BeiDou stand-alone positioning terminals, up about 30 per cent from the same period last year, the ministry said.
It added that several cities had achieved 100 per cent adoption of BeiDou in specific areas, including shared bicycles, taxis, government vehicles and agricultural machinery.
By the first half of this year, 39 pilot cities had deployed more than 12 million BeiDou-enabled stand-alone positioning terminals, the ministry said, with more than 7.2 million in consumer applications, over 4.6 million in industrial manufacturing and more than 1 million in integrated innovation.
The post quoted Li Xiayu, an engineer at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, as saying that while BeiDou’s application continued to deepen in sectors including transport, public safety and smart agriculture, the system was also expanding rapidly into consumer products.
BeiDou positioning had “basically become standard” in smartphones, smart wearables and in-vehicle terminals, Li added.
The ministry said more than 98 per cent of the 133 million mobile phones shipped in the domestic market in the first half of this year supported BeiDou positioning.
By the end of last year, cumulative shipments of domestically made BeiDou-compatible chips and modules had reached nearly 2.6 billion units, while more than 2.2 billion BeiDou-enabled terminals and other products were in use nationwide.
While BeiDou has established a dominant position in the Chinese market and is deeply integrated into domestic infrastructure, Beijing is also pushing for wider international adoption to offer an alternative to Western-led systems like GPS and the European Union’s Galileo.
The BeiDou system recently completed a comprehensive upgrade, Xinhua reported late last month. The upgrade focused on replacing older satellites with newer, third-generation models and realigning their orbital paths to allow more comprehensive global coverage, according to a document released by the China Satellite Navigation Office in late March.
BeiDou’s overseas users are currently mostly concentrated in countries taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s infrastructure-forward strategy for regional connectivity. For instance, the system is used for ship navigation and port scheduling in the Middle East, and in the agricultural and transport sectors in Central Asia.


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39 pilot cities added 2.96 million BeiDou positioning terminals in first half of this year, up 30 per cent year on year


39 pilot cities added 2.96 million BeiDou positioning terminals in first half of this year, up 30 per cent year on year.


China’s BeiDou satellite navigation system covers 90% of ‘key industry’ uses: ministry

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}39 pilot cities added 2.96 million BeiDou positioning terminals in first half of this year, up 30 per cent year on year

39 pilot cities added 2.96 million BeiDou positioning terminals in first half of this year, up 30 per cent year on year