Smartphone features come from thin air. Most users never know how, or even what, produces the app features and functions. Geolocating in everyday usage embedded in vehicle navigation, airplanes, and even hiking maps. American GPS technology is now everywhere after more than a half-century of effort. Now the tech is in IoT gadgets and smartphones. The USA satellites making all this possible were only completed 30 years ago.
The role of NavIC for a Dynamic India is another stage in asserting a technological and applications independence from global providers.
Now, India’s ISRO has stepped into a elite club where there has only been the USA (GPS, 1993), Russia (GLONASS, 1995), China (BeiDou, 2020), Japan (QZSS, regional only 2018), and the EU (Galileo, 2022). All of these space-borne systems have dedicated satellites, radio frequency allocations, and specialized semiconductors. The costs of the original American GPS was USD$5B (likely more than USD$10B in 2022 dollars). Galileo is estimated to cost Euro10B, and the limited QZSS system was estimated to cost Yen170B. The Indian NavIC system was costed at Rp22.46B in early stages of the program. Each of these very expensive systems require design, construction, and satellite launches. In addition, receivers (special semiconductors) are needed requiring inexpensive price-points to get adoption of device and service providers.
The Indian government has sought to change NavIC features (and thus, many other devices) by commanding the market to include their functions in smartphones. GPS chips (with provision for GLONASS and BeiDou in many cases) are found inexpensively in almost all smartphones, many tablets, and hosts of other devices (IoT, embedded in vehicles, airplanes, and ship navigation equipment). This market push ran into realities: India did not have international permission to use similar frequencies to existing technologies, semiconductors (and radio gear) to receive early-phase NavIC signals required specialized (non-commodity) chips, and applications were not readily available to use the NavIC technology. The spectrum allocations (L1 band), special chips (features added to existing GPS semiconductors), and apps are now becoming realities for NavIC after long periods of development.
Market pushback from Apple, Samsung, Chinese, and other manufacturers has slowed the embedding of NavIC into devices for the Indian marketplace. A prior survey of Chinese smartphones showed 94.5% had BeiDou support as the chipsets used similar radio processing as American GPS. Adding NavIC to existing smartphone and device chipsets had to be done by enterprises outside India. This is seen as likely complete in the 2024-2025 timeframe. Some chipsets had the technical capability to support NavIC in previous generations where the largest manufacturers will now move to provide the capability. Smartphones with NavIC apps are likely to be more prominent as additional satellites are launched and apps gain maturity.
In the next segment EkaLore will look at the continuing initiatives from the Government and lessons to be learned from long-term efforts.
For more analysis and notes on a Dynamic India see http://www.ekalore.com/india-business
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