By Tong Na
From May 15 to 19, the 3rd China Satellite Navigation Conference (aka Beidou Conference) was held in Guangzhou. The theme of this year's conference is "Beidou on the path of application". Accelerating the commercial application of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System has become the center of attention of the industry.
"The independence and compatibility of the structure of the Beidou system, its integration of positioning and communication, enhanced features, and construction-application policy will usher in the best development phase for its industrial application", said academician Sun Jiadong, chief designer of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System project and president of Science Committee of the Beidou Conference. Mr. Sun suggested that the rapid development of internet and information technology and the modern business models had promoted the reform of social economic pattern and the information industry; it had also provided all kinds of possibilities for the application and innovation of satellite navigation.
Good prospects for the civil market
"The contribution rate of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System to the global navigational precision, stability, and reliability is as high as 23.6 percent", new data released by Yang Yuanxi, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, during the conference. He believes that, in comparison with the USA's GPS, Beidou is superior in terms of initial positioning speed and time service precision. After the completion of the network connection of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, users positioning, text communication, and position report would take only seconds, whereas the initial positioning of GPS would take 1 to 3 minutes. In the future, Beidou aims to take up 80 percent of the Chinese market, and endeavor to gain 20 percent of the global market.
According to Liu Jingnan, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering, early testing shows that the availability of GPS in China and the Asian-Pacific region is around 60 percent, and the availability of Beidou + GPS would reach 80 percent. Besides, experiments have proved that after adding the Beidou system, navigational precision in the Asian-Pacific region would increase by 10 to 20 percent.
As the network connection of Beidou approaches completion, China's Beidou Navigation Satellite System is currently incubating a huge market. According to the prediction of CCID Consulting, the scale of China's Beidou satellite navigation industry will amount to RMB 30.346 billion Yuan in 2014, the compound annual growth rate in the next 3 years being as high as 52.3 percent. A Chinese Beidou Satellite Navigation industry union predicts that the Beidou Navigation Satellite industry will reach RMB 50 billion Yuan in 2015. In the few years to come, the annual growth rate of the Beidou Navigation Satellite industry will be over 50 percent, or even over 60 percent, with demands in the civil market increasing steadily.
Get through the industrial chain
The innovative model of "products + service" was a major highlight of this year's Beidou Conference. In the conference, UniStrong, Hwa Create Corporation, Guangzhou Haige Communications Group, EVE Energy and other enterprises have all exhibited their new products, including such core parts and terminal products as dual systems (Beidou/GPS) positioning modules, dual systems board (including satellite reception and high-precision time service), dual systems in-car navigation terminals and hand-held devices, Beidou combined navigation modules, and Beidou terminals and equipments that cater to different industrial application. Their intentions to grab the application market of the Beidou system seem rather obvious.
Presently, the biggest issue facing the Beidou satellite navigation industry is the price of terminal products. Technically and theoretically Beidou has such advantages as positioning precision and two-way transmission over GPS, but the price of its terminal products is markedly higher. In this year's conference, UniStrong introduced a Beidou navigation module that was priced at RMB 199 Yuan, which could reduce the price of Beidou's core part by as much as 70 percent.
Industrial participants point out that the commercialization of Beidou must not depend too much on government subsidy. Beidou needs to be energetic, and the price must be similar to GPS. Only this way can users really come to accept Beidou.
"The Beidou System belongs to us. We all have the willingness to use it, but in order to make users truly accept Beidou, the key is to offer high-performance products at a price that is the same as that of GPS, offering GPS + Beidou products, that is, providing users with an extra choice but without increasing the cost", said Xie Haizhong, chief manager of UniStrong's Beidou Navigation Technology, "The keys for the application of Beidou: firstly, the Beidou system needs to be stable and reliable, which is even more important than the system's having high performance; secondly, the performance of terminal products that end up in the hands of users must be stable and reliable; and thirdly, and most importantly, the use of Beidou must not increase the users' cost; price is an important factor. As an enterprise that promotes industrial application, what we can do is the last two things: stable and reliable products and reasonable price. If we can do these well, the industry will naturally get better".
In fact, from the perspective of industrial chain, besides high-quality and cost-effective products, the Beidou Navigation Satellite System also needs manufacturing enterprises to come up with competitive solutions and promotion strategies creatively. This is also essential for the large-scale development of Beidou.
Introducing service platforms
Also appearing in the conference was the Beidou Online service platform introduced by Beidou Star. It is learned that Beidou Online is a comprehensive service platform that is supported by such technologies as the internet of automobiles, cloud computing, satellite navigation, and mobile internet, is based on the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, and provides position information of automobiles to government and industries through Beidou navigation products. In the future, Beidou Online will gradually develops into a large-scale Beidou internet of automobiles operation service center that is open to the whole country and covers industrial and consumption users.
Realizing that innovation of business model is an important propeller for the commercialization of Beidou, UniStrong has launched the "China Position" service platform in as early as July, 2011, which has promoted the integration of Beidou with other satellite navigation systems and the integration of the 3S (satellite navigation, geography information system, and remote sensing) technologies with IT, internet and other industries, effectively transferring positioning service contents to the vast consumption market. It is told that, within one year of its launching, the "China Position" service platform has been widely used in such fields as auto clubs, telecommunication, logistics, and civil administration.
Industrial participants who took part in the conference point out that, from the perspective of the industrial chain, China's Beidou Navigation Satellite System has now basically possessed the entire industrial chain from chip manufacturing, navigation maps, and terminal to system integration and operation service. However, the commercialization of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System needs not only to be pushed by products of high performance-price ratio, but also to be driven by market demands.
