China says BeiDou terminals had another major growth year in 2025, with total domestic sales topping 410 million units and sets. The figures come from the newly released 2026 China BeiDou Spatiotemporal Industry Development White Paper, published by the China Satellite Navigation and Positioning Association.
According to the report, the country’s broader BeiDou spatiotemporal industry reached an output value of 1.3323 trillion yuan in 2025. Within that total, the core satellite navigation segment accounted for 629 billion yuan, up 9.24% year over year. The report describes the sector as part of a mature and increasingly resilient industrial chain that now spans chips, modules, antennas, terminals, systems integration, and application services.
The white paper also says the installed base of devices with BeiDou functionality has grown well beyond annual shipments. By the end of 2025, the total number of BeiDou-capable terminals in use across different categories had exceeded 2.2 billion units and sets. That includes smartphones, vehicle systems, wearables, and other connected devices that rely on positioning and timing services.
Officials also pointed to earlier system-level improvements. In March, Chinese state media reported that the BeiDou satellite navigation network had undergone in-orbit upgrades intended to improve service quality by optimizing the operating status of certain satellites. The system currently has 50 satellites in orbit, with official figures claiming space-signal accuracy better than 2 meters, global positioning accuracy better than 10 meters, speed measurement accuracy better than 0.2 meters per second, and timing errors below 20 nanoseconds.
For higher-precision scenarios, the paper adds that BeiDou’s precise point positioning service can deliver horizontal accuracy better than 0.3 meters and vertical accuracy better than 0.6 meters. Taken together, the latest numbers suggest China is continuing to expand both the commercial scale and technical reach of its homegrown positioning ecosystem.
