Over 80 million BeiDou chips sold
By Ning Hong
["china"]
The sale of China's BeiDou navigation-based chips has surpassed 80 million, according to Ran Chengqi, director of the China Satellite Navigation Office, who delivered a report on the 10th China Satellite Navigation Conference held in Beijing on Wednesday.
Ran said 22-nanometer dual-frequency positioning chips are now ready for commercial applications.
He praised the support from domestic and global enterprises for their efforts in producing chips compatible with the BeiDou system.
There are 116 new cellphone models with positioning services who applied to enter the Chinese market in the first quarter of 2019, and 82 of them support the BeiDou positioning system. 
The latest report on China's BeiDou Satellite Navigation System expects the scale of China satellite navigation industry to reach 400 billion yuan (57.8 billion U.S. dollars) by 2020.
So far, over six million vehicles in 36 cities have been using BeiDou in the transport sector. Long-distance operation and precision farming are helping to raise output by five percent and saving 10 percent of fuel cost. The short messaging service provided by BeiDou is installed on over 70,000 fishing ships.
(Cover: The sale of China's BeiDou navigation-based chips has surpassed 80 million. /CGTN Photo)