Beidou may drop in price and compete with US’GPS

Receiver chips for the Beidou satellite navigation system may become as cheap as those of the Global Positioning System (GPS) next year in China, a step that industry experts said Sunday would accelerate Beidou's commercial viability in the country.

Chip prices, once a barrier to commercializing the Beidou system, may undergo several cuts next year, bringing them close to those of GPS, Zhao Yao-sheng, a satellite navigation expert who consults for Beijing BDStar Navigation Co, told the Global Times Sunday.

Beidou, or Compass, is a homegrown global navigation satellite system in China. Similar systems around the world include the EU's Galileo system, the US' GPS and the Russian Global Navigation Satellite System.

Xinhua News Agency reported in 2011 that over 95 percent of navigation users in China used GPS chips. But this may change, industry experts said, if Beidou can offer similar precision and its receiver chip prices drop significantly.

Currently, Beidou receiver chips are several times more expensive than GPS chips.

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