China's navi-location industries to boom

BEIJING -- The annual product of China's satellite navigation and location service industries will exceed 225 billion yuan ($36.6 billion) in 2015, a white paper predicted on Tuesday.

By 2020, when China is expected to expand its home-grown regional BeiDou Navigation Satellite System to global coverage, the industries' annual product will hit 400 billion yuan, with 800 million users, according to the white paper released by the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Location Based Service (LBS) Association of China.

However, such products grossed 81 billion yuan in 2012, less than eight percent of the global share, the paper said. The BeiDou system, also known as Compass, generated an output of only 4 billion yuan last year.

About 230,000 BeiDou terminals are being used by civilians.

But the white paper said the BeiDou system has overwhelming advantages.

"Compared with GPS, the BeiDou system is able to acquire better signals in dense built-up areas in cities, and is faster in first-time positioning.

"BeiDou also has the function of short message communication," it read.

It pointed out that China's GNSS and LBS industries were developed based on the use of GPS, and they lack core technologies, complete industrial chains and market scale.

China is working out more measures to push the industries such as focusing on the construction of its own BeiDou system and promoting dual-mode GPS/BeiDou auto navigation products, according to the white paper.