China's satellite navigation industry valued at $80 billion in 2024

By the end of last year, the overall value of satellite-enabled navigation and positioning services in China reached about 576 billion yuan ($80 billion), a 7.39 percent year-on-year increase, according to an industry white paper released on Sunday.

The 2025 White Paper on the Development of China's Satellite Navigation and Positioning Industries, compiled by the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location-Based Services Association of China, said the combined output of chips, equipment, software, data and infrastructure totaled 170 billion yuan, up 5.46 percent from the previous year.

In 2024, about 410 million terminal devices equipped with satellite-based navigation and positioning functions were sold in China, including roughly 294 million smartphones and more than 20 million vehicle-mounted devices.

By the end of the year, over 2 billion devices — such as smartphones and computers — on the Chinese mainland were capable of using China's Beidou navigation and positioning service.

Nearly 1 million people are employed at about 20,000 domestic institutes and companies engaged in Beidou and other satellite-based navigation and positioning services, according to the white paper.

Beidou is one of China's largest civilian satellite systems and one of four global navigation networks, along with the United States' GPS, Russia's GLONASS and the European Union's Galileo.

Since 2000, a total of 64 Beidou satellites have been launched aboard 47 Long March 3-series rockets from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province.

The system was declared complete in July 2020 and has been providing full-scale global services since then.

Currently, more than 50 Beidou satellites are in active service, operating in multiple types of orbits.