The Trillion-Dollar Roadmap of Beidou
(The author of this article is FocusOne, and Titanium Media has been authorized to publish it)
By Dingjiao One (dingjiaoone), Author: Wang Hanxing, Editor: Wei Jia
In the morning, when you leave home and ride a shared bike, your mobile phone's precise navigation helps you avoid traffic congestion; when you open a food delivery app, the rider’s location updates in real time; when driving on an elevated highway, voice prompts alert you to construction ahead—these daily occurrences are silently powered by the same system: BeiDou.
A thousand years ago, ancient Chinese described the Earth’s rotation and revolution with the phrase 'the turning of the Big Dipper,' with the Big Dipper being a beacon for determining directions and observing seasons. A thousand years later, based on this 'BeiDou sentiment' among the Chinese people, one of the world’s four global satellite navigation systems was born: the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System.
During this year’s Two Sessions national meetings, the achievement of 'comprehensive expansion of BeiDou scale applications by 2025' was included in the government work report. The report also listed 'accelerating the development of satellite internet' as one of the key tasks for 2026.
At the press conference on economic themes during the Fourth Session of the 14th National People's Congress, Zheng Shanjie, Director of the National Development and Reform Commission, stated,The scale of the BeiDou industry is expected to exceed 1 trillion yuan within five years.
The industrial development and scaled application of BeiDou can be traced back to 2013, when the release of the 'White Paper on the Development of China's Satellite Navigation and Location Services Industry' saw representatives from the China Satellite Navigation and Positioning Association designate two 'starting years' for 2013: 'the starting year for standardizing BeiDou systems in personal mobile devices and vehicle electronics' and 'the starting year for BeiDou location services.'
After 32 years of technological breakthroughs and 13 years of commercial exploration, BeiDou has long transcended the single label of 'satellite positioning,' permeating into the capillaries of thousands of industries and becoming a core engine driving real economic growth and breaking foreign technological monopolies.
Nowadays, BeiDou, with full industrial chain autonomy, is comprehensively applied in consumer, production, and urban construction sectors, not only rewriting the global satellite navigation industry landscape but also supporting a trillion-yuan imagination space for China’s aerospace economy.
Many people think BeiDou is 'used by the state' and distant from their lives. In fact, it has already entered your smartphone, the shared bike you ride, and the high-speed train you take, becoming one of the essential yet inconspicuous infrastructures in daily life.
According to the '2025 White Paper on China’s Satellite Navigation and Location-based Services Industry,' in 2024, the total output value of China’s satellite navigation and location services reached 575.8 billion yuan, increasing by 7.39% year-on-year. By the end of the year, 288 million smartphones supported BeiDou positioning, with high-precision lane-level navigation covering more than 99% of urban and rural roads nationwide. Moreover, road tests for intelligent connected vehicles empowered by BeiDou have been conducted in over 50 cities across the country.
Meituan's shared bikes were among the first batch of companies to actively promote the application of BeiDou in the mass consumer market.
Zhang Peng, General Manager of Meituan's Cycling Industry Development Center, told "Focus One" that BeiDou's precise spatiotemporal capabilities have been deeply integrated into the entire lifecycle of shared two-wheeled vehicles, including software and hardware upgrades, platform applications, and management monitoring. This enables real-time monitoring of vehicle riding behavior and full-process management of operational data, providing important data support for urban transportation planning.
These functions, which may seem 'not obviously perceptible,' actually play a crucial role in ensuring user safety and improving operational efficiency.
For a long time, the entire shared bike industry relied on multi-module chips for vehicle positioning, leading to complex cost structures and slow upgrade iterations.
In the second half of 2023, Meituan's shared bikes began to take the lead in promoting the transition from multi-module positioning to 'single BeiDou' positioning within the industry. The company organized dozens of employees from multiple departments to debug and iterate on the software and hardware systems of shared two-wheeled vehicles, gradually upgrading the old positioning system entirely to BeiDou independent positioning.
By the end of 2025, the number of shared two-wheeled vehicles using BeiDou independent positioning nationwide will exceed 10 million, with an application coverage rate of approximately 70%.
Zhang Peng provided "Focus One" with several sets of data changes before and after the deployment of BeiDou independent positioning:
Improved dispatch efficiency - real-time vehicle location visibility reduces dispatch response time by 60%;
Enhanced anti-theft tracking - recovery rate for stolen vehicles rises above 99%;
Better user experience - precise billing leads to a 70% reduction in complaints.
From the overall application situation in the industry, after integrating high-precision Beidou positioning, shared two-wheel vehicles are parked more accurately, and road parking order has been greatly improved. The general public can also find and use bikes more precisely and conveniently, effectively solving common problems such as 'unable to find a bike or unable to return a bike' and reducing misjudgments of parking outside designated areas or no-parking zones, thereby significantly enhancing user experience.
Moreover, as Beidou’s technology for mass consumer applications matures, usage costs have notably decreased, and long-standing issues plaguing the shared bike industry are being resolved one by one. More and more companies are recognizing Beidou's commercial value.
In the smartphone sector, the application of Beidou is becoming increasingly sophisticated.
For a long time, Beidou positioning in smartphones relied on other navigation systems to operate. Six smartphone companies—Huawei, ZTE, Honor, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo—teamed up with upstream SoC chip vendors to successively launch smartphone products featuring independent Beidou positioning and prioritizing Beidou, breaking this awkward situation.
Data shows that by 2025, shipments of smartphones supporting independent Beidou positioning and prioritizing Beidou will reach 76.68 million units, accounting for 27% of the total domestic smartphone shipments, with year-over-year growth exceeding 50%.
In addition to the explosive growth of applications on the consumer side,Beidou’s value on the production side should not be overlooked either. It has become one of the core pillars driving industrial digital transformation.
In agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, Beidou precision agriculture technology has enabled the full intelligence of processes like sowing, fertilizing, and harvesting. Unmanned agricultural machinery equipped with the Beidou system has achieved nearly unmanned operations throughout the entire process. Beidou base stations work in tandem with field cameras, weather stations, and more, helping automate the perception, monitoring, early warning, remote diagnosis, and command decision-making of farm production information.
In the power sector, China Southern Power Grid Company follows the 'Beidou + Power' strategy and has built an integrated Beidou operational service platform, accumulating over 200,000 hours of usage, completing the networking of 665 Beidou base stations, successfully expanding Beidou applications in 40 categories within the power sector, and promoting the use of 178,000 sets of various Beidou terminals.
Today, the real value of Beidou is no longer limited to several dozen medium-orbit positioning satellites. It has shed its high-tech halo and penetrated everyday life for ordinary people and business operations for enterprises, forming an all-encompassing industrial ecosystem—which is also the core confidence behind its push towards a trillion-dollar output.
That BeiDou has come this far was not a foregone conclusion. Thirty-two years ago, China started building its navigation system almost from scratch, and the trigger for this effort was a 'disconnection' incident in the Indian Ocean.
In July 1993, the Chinese cargo ship 'Galaxy' set sail with a shipment destined for the Middle East. When the vessel reached the Indian Ocean, its navigation signal suddenly cut out, leaving the crew disoriented and unable to proceed. Despite attempts by the accompanying crew to repair it, the signal could not be restored. It was later revealed that GPS had disabled the navigation signals in the area where the ship was located.
This news sent shockwaves back home, making many aerospace scientists and defense personnel realize the importance of having an independent navigation system. Subsequently, Academician Sun Jiadong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shen Rongjun, deputy director of the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, jointly submitted a proposal to the state, recommending the launch of China’s BeiDou Satellite Navigation System.
In December 1994, the experimental satellite system project for BeiDou Navigation received national approval, officially initiating BeiDou-1, marking the start of China's three-step process toward developing its independent satellite navigation system.
The first step was to solve the issue of going from nothing to something.
Most navigation satellites are medium-orbit satellites, which operate at higher altitudes than the widely recognized low-orbit satellite constellations such as GW constellation, Qianfan constellation, and SpaceX Starlink. As a result, their communication capabilities are relatively weaker, primarily focusing on navigation functions.
Six years after the initiation of BeiDou, BeiDou-1 achieved initial 'dual-satellite positioning' using two geostationary orbit satellites, making China the third country in the world, after the United States and Russia, to possess an independent satellite navigation system.
What sets BeiDou-1 apart is its unique short message communication capability, which is absent in typical navigation satellites. This feature allows users to send and receive short messages via satellite in areas without ground network coverage, applicable in emergency rescue, deep-sea fishing, and other fields.
In 2004, BeiDou embarked on the second phase of its development., expanding the coverage area from China to the entire Asia-Pacific region, by launching 14 satellites to build the BeiDou-2 system. The positioning accuracy significantly improved compared to BeiDou-1, and the short message communication function was further enhanced. It achieved a leap from 'single-point positioning' to 'regional networking,' laying the foundation for large-scale civilian use.
The third step saw BeiDou beginning its global outreach, with the official launch of the BeiDou-3 project in 2009.
To achieve high-precision navigation covering the globe, more satellites were needed for support. Shortly after the approval of BeiDou-3, high-density launches began. In 2018 alone, BeiDou-3 launched 18 satellites.
By the end of 2018, Ran Chengqi, Director of the China Satellite Navigation System Management Office and spokesperson for the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, officially announced that the basic system of BeiDou-3 had been completed and it had begun providing global services.
To date, the three generations of the BeiDou series have launched a total of 60 satellites, distributed across geostationary orbit, inclined geosynchronous orbit, and medium Earth orbit, providing satellite navigation and short message communication services to global users.
From its formal approval in 1994 to the completion of the global BeiDou-3 network in 2020, China spent three generations of satellites and a quarter of a century forging a path of independent innovation from following to parity and then to leadership, breaking the GPS monopoly in the global satellite navigation field and constructing a globally leading aerospace information network.
In tandem with BeiDou's progress, the output value of the satellite navigation and location services industry has also grown.
After the full completion of Beidou-3 in 2020, industrial applications began accelerating. In 2021, the total output value of China’s satellite navigation and location service industry reached approximately 470 billion yuan, with the total social stock of terminal products featuring Beidou positioning exceeding 1 billion units.
That same year, more than 7.8 million road-operating vehicles were installed with the BeiDou system, nearly 8,000 BeiDou terminals of various models were promoted and applied in the railway sector, and downstream operational service segments such as healthcare, epidemic prevention and disinfection, remote monitoring, and online services generated nearly 200 billion yuan in output value.
By 2024, the total output value of BeiDou-related industries had approached 600 billion yuan, just one step away from reaching the trillion-yuan mark.
The incremental output of one trillion RMB can be traced from three directions: policy support, industrial chain backing, and scenario expansion.
First isPolicy support has been rolled out comprehensively from central to local levels.
As early as July 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially launched pilot city initiatives for large-scale BeiDou application, and by October of the same year, announced a list of 39 pilot cities.
Since the launch of the pilot programs, the 39 pilot cities have successively introduced targeted policies, allocated financial support, developed innovative products, and created new scenarios, cumulatively promoting over 10 million BeiDou standalone positioning applications. The number of applications has significantly increased in areas such as consumer markets, industrial manufacturing, and integrated innovation.
Xiong’an New Area serves as a typical case. As an entirely newly built modern three-dimensional urban space and selected as a BeiDou pilot city, Xiong’an has established the country’s first “underground city” BeiDou application scenario.
Countless drivers have experienced getting lost in underground parking lots, but in Xiong’an, there is a massive 'underground city.' In the Rongdong area alone, there are about 50,000 parking spaces, interconnected through underground spaces spanning 95 residential zones covering more than 4 million square meters.
Most conventional road navigation systems operate similarly to two-dimensional planar navigation, considering only four cardinal directions—north, south, east, and west. However, when navigation functions are extended to underground scenarios, they need to interpret three-dimensional spatial information. Thus, Xiong’an, leveraging 4G and 5G passive distributed antenna systems built by telecom operators, has introduced BeiDou signals underground, achieving deep integration of communication and navigation, creating a unified above-ground and underground basic information service system.
Policy measures are accelerating the nationwide promotion of BeiDou applications.AndThe increasing maturity of the related industrial chain，provides capacity support for application promotion.
Currently, the BeiDou industrial chain has achieved self-reliance and controllability. The mass production level of upstream chips and modules continues to improve, the competitiveness of midstream terminal equipment and system integration is constantly strengthening, and downstream operational service scenarios are becoming increasingly diversified, forming a virtuous cycle characterized by 'sufficient upstream supply, active midstream innovation, and strong downstream demand'.
Taking upstream chips as an example, China’s BeiDou chips have reached overall maturity. Standard-accuracy BeiDou chips primarily utilize a 28-nanometer manufacturing process, which is mature and controllable, enabling both domestic design and domestic production. Annual market capacity exceeds 200 million units, with domestically produced chips accounting for over 80%.
Looking ahead, the deep integration of BeiDou with new technologies such as 5G, drones, autonomous driving, and artificial intelligence is giving rise to new application scenarios and business models.
The low-altitude economy represented by drones is a completely new application scenario for BeiDou that has emerged in recent years. By integrating with regulatory efforts on unique product identification codes for civilian drones, the industry is encouraging drone manufacturers to incorporate BeiDou's standalone positioning technology during development, providing assurance for flight route planning and safe flying.
By 2025, the shipment volume of drones utilizing BeiDou standalone positioning is expected to reach approximately 900,000 units, accounting for 38% of the total domestic shipment volume. Mainstream models from leading companies like DJI have already fully integrated BeiDou positioning modules.
Autonomous driving represents another significant growth area. There are several key technologies required for vehicles to achieve autonomous driving, including positioning and navigation, environmental perception, route planning, decision-making control, and more.
BeiDou’s high-precision positioning technology can provide autonomous vehicles with location and orientation information based on high-precision positioning services supplied by the BeiDou ground-based augmentation system, ensuring highly accurate and reliable navigation information, thereby enabling intelligent control of autonomous vehicles. As competition among automakers in the field of autonomous driving intensifies, this demand will continue to grow.
Thirty-two years ago, the Galaxy incident lost its way in the Indian Ocean because someone turned off a signal. Today, over one billion devices run on BeiDou’s positioning functionality, with its signals covering the entire globe.
From a blank slate to achieving full industrial chain self-reliance and control, from being restricted by GPS to nearing a trillion-yuan industry value, this distance reflects the efforts of an entire generation. The path it has taken epitomizes China’s technological self-innovation most authentically.
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