China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System will see wider civilian¹ application in the coming two years both at home and abroad, as the domestically developed system is increasingly used in shared bicycles, logistics, precision farming and other industries that demand high-accuracy positioning, a new report said on Wednesday.

 

未来两年内，中国北斗卫星导航系统在国内外将进入更多的民用领域，这套中国自主研发的系统在共享单车、物流、精准农业以及其它需要精准定位的行业会得到越来越多的应用。

 

The growth of bike-sharing has rapidly boosted the use of BeiDou in the transportation sector², creating a 17 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) market for that type of location-based services by 2020, according to the report, released by the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location-based Services Association of China.

 

Mobike, a major bike-sharing company, uses smart locks that support both GPS and BeiDou. One of its big rivals, Ofo, said in April that it would use BeiDou-enabled locks.

 

BeiDou is the world's fourth navigation system based on satellites, among the ranks of the United States' GPS, Russia's GLONASS, and the European Union's Galileo.

 

In 2016, the output of China's navigation system and satellite location-based market-including sales and other associated economic activity-hit 211.8 billion yuan, up by 22 percent from a year earlier, according to the report.

 

BeiDou accounted for about 70 percent of the nation's market share of chips, equipment, software, algorithms and other services directly related to satellite navigation in 2016.

 

China plans to launch six to eight more satellites this year as part of its broad effort to expand the BeiDou network to cover countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative by the end of 2018.

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