A new white paper points to roaring growth in the industrial output of China’s satellite guidance and positioning sector last year.
The “2018 China Satellite Guidance and Positioning Service Sector Development White Paper” (2018中国卫星导航与位置服务产业发展白皮书) indicates that in 2017 the total output of the industry reached 255 billion yuan (approx. USD$39.93 billion), for year-on-year growth of 20.4%.
The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) made a contribution to core industrial output of 80%, while core industrial output, encompassing areas directly related to satellite guidance technology such as chips, components, calculations and navigation data, accounted for 35.4% of industrial output.
The white paper notes that in September 2017 Shenzhen’s Allystar officially launched new chips for BeiDou-3 satellites, that provide for sub-meter level position accuracy without ground-based augmentation.