Beidou-based services to exceed 200 billion yuan in 2015
Last Updated: 2015-09-02 09:22 |
By Dong Bijuan
Recently, Qianxun Location Network Co., Ltd. invested jointly by Alibaba Group and China North Industrial Group Corporation with 2 billion yuan was founded which added new force for China's Beidou satellite navigation industry. Since last year, similar messages are heard: Tencent invested Navinfo with 1.173 billion yuan; Millet obtained stock right in Careland with 84 million yuan...Big giants' scrambling to layout in Beidou industry is aiming its huge development potential.
Continuous breakthrough in three major markets
Miao Qianjun, executive vice president and secretary-general of GNSS & LBS Association of China, said: "Beidou industry is a pronoun of China satellite navigation and position service industry. Since 2013, the first year of Beidou application, the annual compound growth rate of Beidou industry is more than 30 percent. Last year, the total output value of China's Beidou industry reached 134.3 billion yuan. In recent years, the spin-off services from Beidou system have reached expectation and could exceed 200 billion yuan this year.
Beidou application market is composed of mass market, industrial market and professional market. The continuous break through in these three application markets make Beidou industry get onto the way of high-speed development. According to Miao Qianjun, the mass application market is now mainly concentrated in two segments, namely the mobile location services and personal vehicles application and is currently in the standard application start-up period. In the future, it will be the biggest share in Beidou application markets;
the industrial application market includes many aspects including disaster prevention and mitigation, urban management and environmental governance and is in a scale application development period; the professional market includes mainly the military applications, public security and armed police applications and safety emergency rescue applications. Though the smallest in proportions of the three markets, it is the high-end market of the industry.
Market breakthrough depends on the support of core technologies. Zhang Kewei, vice general manager of Xi'an Aerospace Huaxun Technology Co., Ltd. under No. 1 Research Institute of China Aerospace Science and Industry Group, said that the company is the number one in the market share of Chinese Beidou on-board chips, and has been successful in R&D and production of the fourth generation of high-performance Beidou/GPS navigation chips with various of their performance and indicators like positioning accuracy, capture sensitivity, and tracking sensitivity having reached the international leading level.
Along with the technical progress and the application extension, Beidou industry is encouraging the emergence of new markets. "For example, the high precision applications which originally focused on the surveying and mapping field are now expanding to other fields like driving test, deformation monitoring, precision agriculture and mechanical equipment. Especially, the driving test and driver training has become a new growth point for the high precision applications with the size of the market having reached more than 600 million yuan. The unit price of high precision product has lowered from 100,000 yuan per set a few years ago to 30,000 to 40,000 yuan recently," said Miao Qianjun.
Considerable multiple challenges
The upstream of Beidou industrial chain is composed of basic software, basic data and basic devices, the midstream includes terminal integration and system integration, and the downstream includes operating services. Miao Qianjun points out, "at present, the output value of China's Beidou industrial chain is mainly concentrated in the midstream with lower added value. This phenomenon of one segment dominant shows that Beidou industry is still in the early stage of development."
"There is misreading on understanding of Beidou industry for some local governments who are rushing to construct Beidou industrial park. This kind of copycat behavior, in fact, is because of the lack of correct understanding on present situation and future development trend of the Beidou industry. Along with the gradual perfection of Beidou industrial chain, the output value of downstream operation service will continue to increase. This is the important symbol of Beidou industry going from primary stage to the mature. It is estimated that by 2020, the downstream output value will account for half of the total. Therefore, we need to think rationally that if it is necessary to take up more space and labor to build parks that prefer the processing and manufacturing," said Miao Qianjun.
In fact, since 2014, most of the planned Beidou industrial parks and industrial bases nationwide in China have presented obvious construction stagnation or slow development condition, and the application of new parks has clearly cooled down. Miao Qianjun said, " related departments in China has applied tougher examination and approval process on park project application and increased monitoring strength gradually that promoted the construction and development of Beidou industrial parks and industrial bases becoming more rationally".
Enterprises in the market felt deeply the challenges as well. Zhang Kewei said that Beidouers in the front line of market is really difficult that they are facing generally three big worries: leaders are worrying about money due to the high R&D costs incurred by many technical bottlenecks; Sales people are worrying about the order due to the fierce competition and high channel barriers brought by a large number of enterprises' entering in to the industry; Technicians are worrying about solutions due to the new questions feeding back from customers one by one that leads the technical solutions to be changed repeatedly.
Promoting healthy development of the industry
In order to further promote the healthy development of Beidou industry, Miao Qianjun suggests that the industry should know the Beidou industry more deeply and avoid it to be dissimilated because of superficial understanding. For example, the relationship between Beidou and GPS is not the life-or-death struggle, but the competition, fusion and sharing in the application with each side's advantages. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the effective combination of diversified capitals and the Beidou industry. Relevant authorities should further strengthen the assessment and regulation for Beidou industrial parks and industrial bases, guiding them entering into a healthy development track.
Zhang Kewei suggests that China should further strengthen its policy and fund support on Beidou core components producing enterprises. Related authorities should categorize domestic Beidou enterprises and set up scoring rules to divide these enterprises into core, key and general enterprises. After that, make more funds and policies support enterprises which carry on R&D of Beidou core technologies and products solidly and promote the industrialization of Beidou really.
"Relevant authorities should further comb and integrate multiply Beidou industry alliances existed in different places currently, making their development more normalized and specialized and promoting indeed the development of Beidou industry." Zhang Kewei proposed that China should found a " Beidou satellite navigation chip industry alliance" and avoid vicious competition between related Chinese enterprises through the alliance, so as to promote the integration of these enterprises and fight against foreign enterprises' competition while ensuring that Chinese chip companies can have reasonable market space for development.
When will our phone use the beidou for location?I cant wait more!
China launches 20th Beidou navigation satellite - China - Chinadaily.com.cn
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XICHANG, Sichuan Province - China launched a new-generation satellite into orbit that will support its global navigation and positioning network at 7:13 am Beijing Time Wednesday.
Launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan, the satellite was boosted by a Long March-3B carrier rocket. It was the 20th satellite for the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), and puts China one step closer to providing an alternative to the US-operated GPS.
For the first time the satellite featured a hydrogen atomic clock. A series of tests related to the clock and a new navigation-signal system will be undertaken, according to a statement from the center.
Named after the Chinese term for the plough or the Big Dipper constellation, the Beidou project was formally launched in 1994, some 20 years after GPS.
The first Beidou satellite was not launched until 2000. Nonetheless, by 2012, a regional network had already taken shape, which provided positioning, navigation, timing and short message services in China and several other Asian countries.
China plans to expand the Beidou services to most of the countries covered in its "Belt and Road" initiative by 2018, and offer global coverage by 2020.