The overall market value of satellite-enabled navigation and positioning services in China, especially those based on the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, is expected to surpass 1 trillion yuan ($147 billion) before the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period, according to an industry leader.

Zhang Huifeng, president of the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location-Based Services Association of China, said the next few years will be crucial for Beidou to fully unleash its potential and value.

During the current plan period, the Beidou system will empower all public and business sectors, he said, as the annual report on Beidou-related businesses was unveiled on Monday at a meeting of the association.

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"It will be deeply integrated into our daily life, and will continuously improve user experience. Nearly all smartphones, electric vehicles and passenger cars manufactured in China now come with Beidou as a standard feature, meaning that members of the public use Beidou-enabled services on a daily basis," Zhang said.

In the international market, users will be given greater access to Beidou-enabled services to facilitate their work and improve their lives, he said, noting that Beidou-based services and related products have been exported to more than 140 countries and regions.

Through localized cooperation, Chinese enterprises have established more than 20 overseas service centers in countries and regions involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, continuously expanding the service network, he added.

By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, Beidou-enabled products and services gained ground in countries and regions involved in the BRI, achieving a 58 percent market share in such places, Zhang said.

According to the association's report, by the end of 2025, the overall value of satellite-enabled navigation and positioning services in China was about 629 billion yuan, up 9.24 percent year-on-year.

Nearly 2 million Chinese people now work at more than 30,000 domestic institutions and companies doing business related to Beidou and other satellite-based navigation and positioning services, the report said.

In 2025, more than 410 million terminal devices with satellite-based positioning and navigation functions were sold in China, including about 280 million smartphones supporting Beidou-enabled services, it said.

By the end of last year, there were over 2.2 billion devices, such as smartphones, computers and vehicle-mounted terminals, on the Chinese mainland that could use Beidou-enabled services, the report added.

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Beidou is China's domestically developed satellite navigation system and the fourth such system in the world alongside the United States' GPS, Russia's GLONASS and the European Union's Galileo.

Starting in 2000, as many as 64 Beidou satellites, including four experimental ones, have been launched using 47 Long March 3 rockets from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan province. The satellite-based navigation system was declared complete in July 2020, and it began providing full-scale global services.

Currently, more than 50 Beidou satellites are in active service, operating in multiple types of orbits.

Contact the writers at zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn