A drone photo taken on Feb. 18, 2025 shows a seeder equipped with the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System sowing in a field during the day of Yushui (Rain Water), the second of the 24 solar terms in the Chinese lunar calendar, in Lintingkou Town, Baodi District, north China's Tianjin Municipality. (Photo: Xinhua)

China's homegrown BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) has made significant strides in terms of application, with the cumulative number of devices such as smartphones, vehicles and specialized equipment with BDS functionality exceeding 2 billion units or sets as of the end of 2024, according to a white paper released on Sunday.

As of the end of 2024, cumulative shipments of BDS-compatible chips and modules in China had reached nearly 2.3 billion units, said the white paper released on Sunday by the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location Based Services Association of China (GLAC).

The white paper also showed that with the rapid advancement of the BDS services sector, the annual number of satellite navigation patent applications has continued to grow. As of the end of 2024, China's cumulative patent applications for satellite navigation exceeded 129,000, up 4.8 percent year-on-year, maintaining China's lead in this sector.

In the consumer application market, the BDS also made great strides in 2024 across smartphones, wearable devices, factory-installed passenger vehicle systems, consumer drones and e-bicycles, further expanding its application scale, according to the white paper.

More than 410 million satellite navigation terminals were sold in China in 2024. Sales of other positioning devices and systems, including the Internet of Things, wearables, vehicles and high-precision applications, exceeded 120 million sets. About 288 million smartphones, representing 98 percent of the market, supported BDS positioning functions in 2024.

The daily average location service requests of 11 major electronic map service providers exceeded 1 trillion in 2024, with a daily total navigation service distance exceeding 4 billion kilometers, the white paper showed. "High-precision lane-level navigation has basically achieved full coverage of urban and rural roads across the country," Liu Dake, vice president of the GLAC, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency.

Broad applications in the consumer market and various industries boosted the total output value of China's satellite navigation and positioning service industry to 575.8 billion yuan ($79.86 billion) in 2024, up 7.39 percent year-on-year, per the white paper.

Apart from the consumer market, the BDS has also fueled industrial upgrades, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"On the technical front, the integration of BDS with emerging technologies like 5G and cloud computing has driven the industry chain toward greater intelligence and convergence, injecting momentum for sustained growth," said Wang.

According to the white paper, the BDS has achieved significant breakthroughs across a wide range of industrial sectors. In transportation, more than 13.5 million BDS-enabled devices were deployed in road transport, postal and express delivery vehicles and rail systems as of the end of 2024. 

At ports, autonomous trucks using BDS have enhanced operational efficiency by 25 percent. In the electricity sector, more than 500,000 BDS-supported devices have been adopted, according to the white paper.

A manager surnamed Yu at a Yiwu-based logistics company told the Global Times that the BDS system is installed in trucks, enabling exporters, importers, logistics companies and customs authorities to track cargo locations in real time and quickly address any anomalies. 

"For example, the journey from Yiwu to Ningbo Port takes about three hours. If a truck is significantly delayed, the BDS system allows immediate location checks and communication with the driver to assess the situation, mitigating risks such as cargo swapping," said the manager.

Driven by China's intensified efforts to prioritize BeiDou applications, the navigation services sector has maintained steady growth. The core output value of the industry, including chips, devices, algorithms, software, navigation data, terminal equipment and infrastructure, directly related to the research and development and application of satellite navigation technology, reached 169.9 billion yuan in 2024.

The white paper also pointed out that the low-altitude economy has become another key application area for the BDS. As the core support for high-precision positioning and navigation services, the BDS system is deeply integrated into the entire low-altitude economy industry chain.

"With digital and intelligent transformations across industries, demand for satellite navigation devices and data has surged, fueling the BDS-based information services sector's expansion," said Yu Xiancheng, president of the GLAC, in a recent interview with China Central Television, adding that policy support from the government has boosted the satellite navigation market's vitality.

The BDS has also achieved growing global adoption. According to the white paper, the BDS, as a recognized supplier of the United Nations Satellite Navigation Commission, has been fully integrated into the standards of 11 international organizations, including those for civil aviation, the maritime sector and mobile communications. Its related services and products are currently exported to more than 140 countries and regions, the white paper said.