China harvests in development of BDS applications industry: white paper

BEIJING -- China has made continuous efforts to refine the products supporting the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) industry, expand its application fields, improve its industry ecosystem, and promote its large-scale applications, according to a white paper published Friday.

The white paper, titled "China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System in the New Era," was released by China's State Council Information Office.

China has established a set of platforms featuring BDS services including international search and rescue, short message communication, satellite-based augmentation, and ground-based augmentation. It has also developed a series of basic products such as chips, modules and antennas, and realized 100-million-scale manufacturing of BDS products.

By developing standards and norms, intellectual property rights, testing and certification, and industrial assessment in a systematic manner, China has created a sound industrial ecosystem for BDS applications with all necessary factors and a strong innovation capacity, said the white paper.

BDS has been widely used in various industries and fields in China's socioeconomic development. It has been deeply integrated with emerging technologies such as big data, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence, fostering new business forms based on BDS. In 2021, the total output value of China's satellite navigation and location-based service industry reached 470 billion yuan (about 64 billion U.S. dollars).

BDS has been widely applied in daily life through applications such as smartphones, vehicle terminals, and wearable devices. In 2021, 324 million Chinese smartphones supporting BDS services were shipped, accounting for 94.5 percent of the country's total, according to the white paper.

China has released the first mobile phone in the world that supports the BDS-3 regional short message communication service by incorporating a chip into a mobile phone. Users can send short messages through BeiDou short message civil platform without changing SIM cards or phone numbers, BDS spokesperson Ran Chengqi told a press conference on the release of the white paper.

Users can still report their location by text message even when there is no cell phone signal, the spokesperson added, noting that BDS allows users to stay in touch with the outside world giving them a sense of security.

He also added that BDS has been widely used in agriculture and has become an important sci-tech force for supporting agricultural development.

BDS-based agricultural equipment, such as farming machinery, drones, autonomous tractors, planters and harvesters, are providing services to farmers around the country, helping them boost production efficiency. Farmers are able to plan their driving routes in advance through mobile phone terminals, Ran said.