39 cities chosen to expand Beidou navigation use

China has chosen 39 pilot cities for large-scale applications of the Beidou navigation satellite system, or BDS, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said on Friday.

Wu Guogang, a senior official in the ministry, released the list at a subforum of the third International Summit on BDS Applications, a two-day conference held in Zhuzhou, Hunan province, on Thursday and Friday to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of BDS.

An earlier notice issued by the ministry in July said each pilot city will have two years to increase the application rate of Beidou and push for upgrades of Beidou equipment to the third generation.

The cities will focus on ways to apply Beidou in general public consumption, industrial manufacturing and integrated innovation.

The total output of the country's satellite navigation and location services industry had exceeded 530 billion yuan ($74.5 billion) as of the end of last year, up by 7 percent from 2022, he said.

By the end of June, there were more than 27 million pieces of equipment equipped with Beidou in China, excluding consumer electronics — up by 17.4 percent from the same period last year, Wu said.