Bikes among boosters of BeiDou
China's BeiDou Navigation Satellite System will see wider civilian application in the coming two years both at home and abroad, as the domestically developed system is increasingly used in shared bicycles, logistics, precision farming and other industries that demand high-accuracy positioning, a new report said on Wednesday.
The growth of bike-sharing has rapidly boosted the use of BeiDou in the transportation sector, creating a 17 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) market for that type of location-based services by 2020, according to the report, released by the Global Navigation Satellite System and Location-based Services Association of China.
Mobike, a major bike-sharing company, uses smart locks that support both GPS and BeiDou. One of its big rivals, Ofo, said in April that it would use BeiDou-enabled locks.