India is forging its own direction when it comes to tech, leveraging its unique mix of expertise, culture mix, and resources. Today's post deals with its creation of its own navigation system.
National governments are pursuing a wide variety of timing, position, and navigation satellite systems as an investment priority. The USA led with a military-sponsored satellite system, called GPS in the 1970s, with eventual civilian use allowed in the 1990s. Other nations followed suit such as Russia (Glonass-1993), China (BeiDou-2000), India (NavIC-2017), the EU (Galileo-2016), and Japan (QZSS-2018). The revolutionary availability of portable has transformed costs and usage with GPS transforming from huge/expensive devices in the 1990s to small portable devices in the 2000s to smartphones with support for multiple systems. National interests overlap with commercial interests.
India is now pursuing policies that require indigenous NavIC system functions to be embedded in smartphones for local sale. These policies are creating market space friction with manufacturers.
India has been pursuing the widescale deployment of the ISRO NavIC since 2006 with initial operating capability in 2018. The combination of standards, satellites, and availability creates an India-specific capability for wide usage. The satellites are equipped with transmitters in the L5 and S-Bands unique to the NavIC system. NavIC has many uses, including military, at a location resolution of less than 10 meters. The resolution of NavIC compares favorably with other systems having been designed decades later. The Indian government is now promoting the availability of NavIC devices.
The availability of a time, positioning, and navigation system in user devices requires embedding into devices of the radio receivers, resolution technique, radio signal processing, and other hardware. In 2020 the initial smartphones with NavIC functions came to market. The Indian market for smartphones has seen upwards of 300 announced products supporting NavIC. The integrated semiconductor chipsets required to support NavIC have been created by dominating manufacturers (Qualcomm, MediaTek) with others working towards support. Foreign producers manufacturing 95% of imported smartphones use chipsets supporting NavIC while the functionality is not yet available across all product platforms. However, it is estimated that only 22M or 256M smartphones in 2022 sales (CyberMedia Research) have NavIC support. The functional utility of NavIC depends on all of the components (including geocoded data) being available to users.
Foreign smartphone manufacturers are pushing back against an implementation deadline requested by the Ministry of Electronics and IT for a January 2023 implementation. Not all product platform chipsets from Qualcomm and MediaTek support NavIC. A key element of the pushback from Xiaomi (Chinese), Samsung (Korean), and Apple (USA) are the changes for NavIC, which will raise the cost of entry-level units in the Indian domestic marketplace (NavIC has no utility outside of India).
Product development cycles requiring NavIC also require additional radio electronics, testing, and semiconductor-embedded design support. For the 2023-2024 product cycles the addition of NavIC isn’t practical for designs and devices already in the product pipeline. Devices for the Indian domestic marketspaces cover a wide range of feature and price points where integration of NavIC has not previously been required.
The combination of “Make in India” policies and a requirement for NavIC are serving to provide Dynamic India with a moment to see if this slows innovation or speeds foreign investment in India-specific product platforms. The utility of a timing, location, and positioning system is not questioned though the deployment of functionality can be performed by multiple methods. The rollout of 5G networks provides yet another means of accomplishing the same functions not requiring NavIC. The challenge for Dynamic India is to gain an advantage in this critical functional capability without slowing innovation or hindering Indian acquisition of applications knowledge.
EkaLore regularly publishes pieces on India's opportunities and unique resources for tech and other industry innovations. Read more at www.ekalore.com/india-business
We'd love to hear any comments or additional thoughts for us.
Comments