Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice on the selection of pilot cities for the large-scale application of Beidou in the fields of industry and information technology (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), proposing to actively carry out pilot work around the three areas of mass consumption, industrial manufacturing, and integrated innovation, combined with the local Beidou industry foundation, urban development characteristics, and construction situation, accelerate the increase of Beidou penetration rate, and promote the orderly upgrading and replacement of Beidou equipment and applications to the third generation of Beidou. The Beidou system is a global satellite navigation system independently built and operated by China, with the ability to provide global services such as positioning, navigation, and timing. Currently, the large-scale application of Beidou has entered a critical stage of marketization, industrialization, and internationalization. The issuance of the Notice will further accelerate the development of the Beidou industry, enhance its service capabilities, promote the large-scale application of Beidou, especially in exploring application models in key areas Yang Ling, the head of the CCID Consulting Intelligent Equipment Industry Research Center, told Science and Technology Daily on July 16th that the pilot work of Beidou scale application is of great significance for promoting new industrialization, cultivating and developing new quality productive forces, and promoting economic and social development. The Notice clearly states that pilot work will be carried out in three areas: mass consumption, industrial manufacturing, and integrated innovation. Among them, in the field of mass consumption, we aim to enhance the perception and popularity of Beidou applications. The pilot cities focus on areas such as smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, shared mobility, and low altitude application drones, actively guiding enterprises to develop and produce Beidou products, and continuously improving product supply capacity. In the field of industrial manufacturing, accelerate the empowerment of Beidou industry applications. Pilot cities should accelerate the promotion of Beidou applications in key areas such as automobiles, ships, aircraft, and robots, taking into account regional characteristics and construction conditions. Encourage the construction of platforms related to vehicle networking and intelligent networking, and comprehensively expand the proportion of Beidou vehicles in key operating vehicles, public domain vehicles, commercial vehicles, and passenger vehicles. Encourage and guide ships sailing in inland rivers, coastal areas, near and far oceans to accelerate the loading of Beidou. Encourage increased support for aircraft related enterprises, accelerate the research and application of airworthiness equipment such as Beidou navigation and short message. In the field of integrated innovation, continuously explore new application scenarios of "Beidou+". Pilot cities guide enterprises to integrate new technologies such as Beidou and 5G, high resolution remote sensing, inertial navigation, high-precision vision, short-range connectivity, ultra wideband (UWB) positioning, big data, cloud computing, etc., promote the innovative application of Beidou system in emerging industries such as the Internet of Vehicles, the Internet of Things, industrial Internet, artificial intelligence, and promote the deep integration of Beidou applications with new scenarios such as smart cities, intelligent transportation, intelligent logistics, smart oceans, and precision agriculture. In Yang Ling's view, the "Notice" clarifies the key points and highlights of Beidou applications: firstly, in terms of application fields, starting from the consumer and industrial ends, exploring new models and formats of Beidou with various intelligent equipment as the entry point, and emphasizing the guidance of integration and innovation between various fields and Beidou, exploring new opportunities and scenarios; Secondly, in terms of application subjects, organizing Beidou applications with cities as the main body has a good promoting effect on improving the research and development capabilities of Beidou related products in key cities, and is more conducive to guiding pilot cities to fully leverage the advantages of regional application scenarios, establish support systems, optimize policy guarantees, and improve innovation systems. It is worth noting that during the selection process of pilot cities, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology emphasized the need to focus on the field of mass consumption, with the core of promoting the widespread application of the BeiDou satellite navigation system in daily consumption, enhancing public awareness and use of BeiDou applications, and improving market share and social influence. According to the "2024 White Paper on the Development of China's Satellite Navigation and Location Services Industry" released by the China Satellite Navigation and Positioning Association, the overall output value of China's satellite navigation and location services industry will reach 536.2 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 7.09%. In terms of mass applications, Beidou has become a "standard configuration" for consumer products such as smartphones and wearable devices. In 2023, the shipment volume of smartphones supporting Beidou positioning function in China will account for about 98%, and Beidou high-precision lane level navigation function has covered ordinary roads in more than 100 cities. The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated that a number of pilot cities led by Beidou technology innovation, rapid development of Beidou industry, and considerable scale of Beidou application will be formed through this pilot work, and a number of replicable and scalable development benchmarks will be established. (New Society)