Satellite applications and services are the end point of truly realizing value in the commercial aerospace industry chain. According to SIA data, this segment will account for 90% of global satellite industry revenue in 2024.
Today we will learn about: China’s commercial aerospace industry chain map in 2025—satellite application and service industry.
In the commercial aerospace industry, there is a basic judgment: rockets determine the upper limit, satellites determine capabilities, and applications and services determine scale. What can truly turn commercial aerospace into a “trillion industry” is not how many satellites are launched, but who can turn data, communications and capabilities into sustainable paid services.
This article systematically sorts out the satellite application and service market size, subdivisions, typical application scenarios and major industry players, and analyzes the current status and future trends of the industry.
01
Satellite application and service market size
1. Global satellite application and service market
According to data from the Satellite Industry Association (SIA), the global satellite industry will be approximately US$293 billion in 2024, an increase of US$8 billion year-on-year, accounting for 71% of global aerospace industry revenue. in:
Satellite applications and services: US$263.6 billion, accounting for about 90%;
Satellite manufacturing: US$20.1 billion, accounting for 7%;
Launch services: $9.3 billion;
Satellite sustainability activities: $350 million.
According to the upstream and downstream divisions of the industrial chain, satellite applications and services can be divided into:
Ground base station and terminal equipment manufacturing: approximately US$155.3 billion, accounting for 59%;
Satellite services industry: approximately US$108.3 billion, accounting for 41%.
This also confirms a basic rule: in a truly mature aerospace industry, the focus of value is always on the application end.
2. China’s satellite application and service market segments
According to satellite functions, China’s satellite applications and services mainly include navigation and positioning, remote sensing, and satellite communications.
(1) Navigation and positioning
This field is the satellite application market with the earliest development and the most complete development of application scenarios in my country. This article focuses more on the field of navigation and positioning because this is currently the only satellite application track in China that has formed a large-scale commercial closed loop.
According to data from the “Beidou Industry Development Blue Book (2025)”, the overall output value of my country’s Beidou industry will reach 575.8 billion yuan in 2024. in:
Industry core output value: 169.9 billion yuan, accounting for 29.51%, a year-on-year increase of 5.46%. Including, chips, devices, algorithms, software, navigation data, terminal equipment, infrastructure, etc. directly related to the research and development and application of satellite navigation technology;
Related output value: 405.9 billion yuan, accounting for 70.49%, a year-on-year increase of 8.21%, driven by satellite navigation applications and services.
(2) Remote sensing industry
According to data from the “China Satellite Remote Sensing and Application Industry Development Blue Book (2024)”, the output value of my country’s remote sensing industry will exceed 260.5 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 6.3%. Among them, the direct industrial income is 43.8 billion yuan:
The output of satellite manufacturing, rocket manufacturing and launch services was 25.1 billion yuan;
Application service output is 17.7 billion yuan;
The output of ground equipment and terminal manufacturing is 1 billion yuan.
Compared with the global satellite industry where launch and manufacturing account for only 10%, China’s satellite manufacturing and launch business will account for 57% of the remote sensing industry in 2024. my country’s remote sensing industry is still clearly in the construction period.
(3) Satellite communication
According to a CITIC Construction Investment research report, the size of my country’s satellite communications market will exceed 80 billion yuan in 2023.
Due to the limited development of the traditional high-orbit communication market, satellite communication is currently the smallest segment in my country’s satellite application and service market. However, with the emergence of new business formats such as low-orbit satellite Internet and satellite Internet of Things, it is becoming the main incremental direction.
02
Main subdivisions and application scenarios
1. Navigation and positioning
my country’s navigation and positioning applications are centered on the Beidou system and have covered 14 key industries including transportation, communications, natural resources, emergency response and agriculture.
Transportation: Beidou system has been widely used in intelligent transportation, vehicle monitoring and high-precision navigation. For example, Beidou’s high-precision lane-level navigation achieves full coverage of urban and rural roads, supports refined services such as signal light countdown, and improves driving safety and traffic efficiency; the cumulative application equipment of road operating vehicles, rail transit, etc. exceeds 13.5 million units (sets), enabling dynamic dispatching of vehicles, intelligent connected cars and autonomous driving, optimizing logistics efficiency and travel experience;
Communication: Beidou short messages provide basic communication capabilities in areas without mobile network coverage (such as oceans or remote areas), supporting two-way location reporting and emergency calls for fishing vessels, rescuers, etc.; and enhancing the reliability of the basic network in scenarios with high time synchronization requirements such as financial transactions and electricity;
Natural resources: In resource surveys and environmental monitoring, the Beidou system combines remote sensing and geographical information technology and is used in farmland information collection, soil nutrient analysis, forest resource inventory and geological disaster monitoring to improve the accuracy and efficiency of data collection. For example, in forestry management, it can realize forest area calculation and fire prevention warning, and reduce labor costs;
Emergency: Beidou system plays a key role in disaster prevention, mitigation and rescue operations. It uses short message functions to achieve rapid disaster reporting, disaster relief command and dispatch, and rapid communication. It can ensure information transmission even when ground facilities are damaged; it is also used in structural health monitoring of buildings, bridges and other structures to improve risk warning capabilities;
Agriculture: Beidou system promotes the development of smart agriculture and is used in automatic driving of agricultural machinery, farmland ridging and sowing, UAV plant protection and precision fertilization. For example, in demonstration bases in Fujian and Xinjiang, the rice transplanting accuracy can be within 2 cm.
In addition, the low-altitude economy is becoming a new growth pole for the navigation and positioning industry. With the RTK function, drones can carry out route planning, autonomous flight, precise positioning, and automatic landing and return to the warehouse. A typical application scenario is drone inspection of transmission lines in the energy and power industry. Fixed-point high-definition shooting can greatly improve inspection efficiency and accuracy.
In 2024, about 1.916 million of the real-name registered drones across the country support Beidou, accounting for about 88%. The latest data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China shows that the size of my country’s low-altitude economic market will exceed 1.5 trillion yuan in 2025, and is expected to climb to 3.5 trillion yuan by 2035. As the scale of the low-altitude economic industry continues to expand, the demand for navigation and positioning will still maintain high growth.
2. Satellite remote sensing
According to statistics from the “China Satellite Remote Sensing and Application Industry Development Blue Book (2024)”, remote sensing applications have covered 13 major fields:
Natural resources: Land change investigation, farmland protection law enforcement inspection, real-life three-dimensional China construction, mine remote sensing monitoring and other fields;
Ecological environment: monitoring of ecological environment conditions, supervision of ecological protection red lines and nature reserves, monitoring of atmospheric environment quality, etc.;
Housing and construction: urban and rural planning monitoring, land subsidence monitoring, etc.;
Agriculture: rural resource survey, crop growth monitoring, etc.;
Meteorology: Meteorological prediction, disaster warning and climate change research, etc.;
Forestry and grassland: resource inventory and monitoring, fire monitoring and forecasting, pest and disease monitoring, fire assessment, etc.;
Emergency disaster reduction: disaster monitoring and early warning, disaster assessment and loss assessment, post-disaster recovery and reconstruction support, risk analysis and prediction;
Energy: hydropower station geological safety monitoring, power grid line settlement safety monitoring, etc.;
Ocean: Marine environment monitoring, marine resource development, marine disaster early warning, etc.;
Transportation: urban traffic monitoring, traffic capacity assessment and signal control optimization, etc.;
Cultural education: Digital protection and monitoring of cultural heritage, etc.;
Financial insurance: precise underwriting, precise claims settlement, etc. for planting industry insurance.
3. Satellite communications
my country’s satellite communications are in the early stages of an industrial explosion.
For traditional businesses, such as satellite telecommunications and satellite radio and television businesses (mainly high-orbit communication satellites), the world’s major markets are almost monopolized by Europe and the United States. In China, the coverage of terrestrial infrastructure such as telecommunications base stations and cable TV penetration rates is relatively complete, so the market size is limited.
Emerging industries such as satellite Internet of Things and satellite Internet (mainly low-orbit communication satellites) started even later. The construction of satellite Internet constellations has entered an intensive launch period, and satellite Internet of Things has been deployed on a large scale in fields such as emergency water conservancy, electric power, petroleum, and environment. For example, in the emergency field, tens of thousands of terminals will be used in 2025; nearly 10,000 VSAT terminals will be used in marine terminals; communications for online monitoring data collection in water conservancy, electric power and other industries have also been applied to a certain extent.
03
Major players in the domestic satellite application industry chain
(1) Satellite navigation and positioning industry chain
China’s satellite navigation and positioning industry chain is becoming increasingly complete, with nearly one million employees and about 20,000 enterprises and institutions. Including: upstream (chips, modules, antennas and other basic components, terminal equipment and system integration) and downstream (Beidou operation services, and applications in maritime navigation, transportation, engineering construction, agriculture, public safety and other fields).
1. The upstream industries mainly include:
1) Beidou chip
Beidou Star: the first listed company in the domestic satellite navigation industry. Its high-precision chips have a market share of over 90% in the surveying and mapping field, and a share of over 80% in the military products field. It has mass-produced Beidou fourth-generation baseband chips;
CTI Navigation: The company’s self-developed high-precision positioning and directional baseband chip “Xuanji” has achieved mass production, and its performance is close to the international mainstream level. Revenue in 2024 will reach 3.251 billion and net profit is 583 million yuan. The chip business serves as a core technology platform to help the company expand in scenarios such as surveying, agriculture, and autonomous driving;
Taidou Microelectronics: The company was established in March 2008. Its products cover a complete industrial structure chain from satellite navigation chips, modules, boards, terminals, application solutions to operation services. It has won the “China Chip” series awards from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for many years in a row;
Zhenxin Technology: Its main business focuses on the R&D, production and sales of key components for Beidou satellite navigation applications, high-performance integrated circuits and terminal equipment for special industries, covering Beidou navigation, national security, Internet of Things and other fields. It is listed as a key nationally supported Beidou series terminal industrialization base;
Aerospace Huaxun: China’s first company to successfully mass-produce GPS navigation chips, it is affiliated to China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation. It is currently mainly engaged in the design, development, production and sales of GPS/Beidou navigation chips and modules, as well as the planning, formulation and implementation of Beidou navigation application system solutions in related industries. It is currently the main supplier of domestic GPS/Beidou core chips and modules;
Huada Beidou: focuses on the independent design, research and development, sales and related businesses of navigation and positioning chips, algorithms and products. The goal is to provide chips and application solutions for the civilian consumer electronics market and special terminal markets such as the national lifeline industries, automotive fields, and the Internet of Things.
2) Foundation enhancement network construction
Jilin Yunzhi Beidou: The company was established in 2014. Its main business covers satellite communication services, Beidou high-precision base station construction and Internet of Things technology development. In 2017, the company completed the infrastructure construction of the Beidou ground-based enhancement network in Northeast China, and provided Beidou high-precision technology for Changchun FAW’s “unmanned vehicles” to achieve centimeter-level satellite navigation;
Liaoning Beidou: Founded in September 2017, its business covers Beidou ground-based enhanced network system construction, high-precision location information services, smart agriculture, smart logistics and other industry solutions.
3) Navigation terminal and system integration
Beidou Star: Provides high-precision positioning modules, vehicle navigation terminals and industry solutions, which are widely used in surveying, agriculture, transportation and other fields;
Northern Navigation: Focusing on the military and civilian markets, it provides Beidou terminal integration services, including navigation equipment, timing systems and industry customized solutions;
Southern Surveying and Mapping: With surveying and mapping instruments and geographic information systems (GIS) as the core, it provides Beidou high-precision positioning terminals, which are widely used in land surveying and mapping, smart cities and other fields;
Hi-Target: Provides Beidou high-precision positioning terminals and industry solutions, covering surveying and mapping, ocean monitoring, intelligent transportation, etc.;
Hezhongsi Zhuang: Provides Beidou high-precision positioning terminals and industry application solutions, including agriculture, forestry, geological disaster monitoring, etc.;
Guoke Tiancheng: focuses on the integrated application of Beidou terminals in military and special fields, providing high security and high reliability terminal equipment;
Quantutong: Provides Beidou high-precision positioning terminals and industry solutions, which are used in fields such as intelligent driving, precision agriculture, and drones;
CTI Navigation: Provides Beidou high-precision positioning terminals and industry solutions, covering surveying and mapping, agriculture, transportation, ocean monitoring and other fields;
Tianao Electronics: The company is engaged in the research and development, design, production and sales of time and frequency products and Beidou satellite application products. It has a national enterprise technology center and is a high-tech enterprise with multiple patents and core technologies.
2. Downstream operation services include:
1) Beidou operation services
China Spacetime was established in October 2024. It is the only Beidou operation service provider in China and is responsible for the design and construction of the national spacetime information operation service platform. The platform supports three core businesses: Beidou short message communication, high-precision navigation and positioning, and spacetime big data business.
2) Maritime navigation
Jiaoxin Group: a national basic telecommunications operator, China’s only Beidou-3 short message GMDSS service provider certified by IMO, leading the construction of the “Transportation and Communications Beidou Message Service Platform” to achieve independent and controllable global maritime distress communications;
Qingdao COSCO Shipping Navigation Technology: A wholly-owned subsidiary of China Ocean Shipping Group, it provides integrated ship communication and navigation solutions, covering AIS, VDR, satellite communication and electronic chart systems. It is an important supporting unit for the maritime informatization of central enterprises;
Xinnuo Beidou Aviation Technology: R&D and manufacturing of ship-borne Beidou intelligent terminals. Its products include 8-inch Beidou GNSS chartplotter, AIS intelligent terminal, and AI+ ship comprehensive information service system, achieving full chain coverage from hardware to smart marine solutions.
3) Transportation
Qianxun Position: A leading company in domestic Beidou space-time intelligent infrastructure, Qianxun Chiguan independently developed the “Qianxun Chiguan” road intelligent inspection system, integrating Beidou high-precision positioning and AI vision technology to achieve lane-level disease identification, centimeter-level coordinate positioning and pavement damage detection with an accuracy of more than 90%. It has been implemented on highways in many provinces and cities across the country, and led the formulation of the first domestic group standard “Technical Requirements for Lightweight Intelligent Maintenance and Inspection of Highway Pavement”;
Hebei Beidou Data Technology Co., Ltd.: A holding company of Hebei Communications Investment Group, it independently develops the “Cangzhou Hazardous Chemical Transport Vehicle Big Data Management Platform” and builds a “Beidou + UAV + AI” integrated air, space and ground supervision system to achieve global trajectory monitoring of hazardous chemical vehicles, holographic management of electronic waybills, and aggregate risk warning and emergency linkage. It won the “Digital Economy Application Innovation Award” at the 2025 Digital Expo.
4) Engineering construction
Shenzhen Beidou Communication Technology: A national-level specialized and special enterprise, it has developed a series of Beidou monitoring terminals called “Motion Communication” and “Motion Instrument”, and built a “sensing-acquisition-transmission-early warning-disposal” closed-loop system. It has deployed more than 10,000 devices in total and monitored more than 2,000 buildings, bridges and slopes, providing legal deformation data support for the housing and construction department.
5) Precision agriculture
XAG Technology: The world’s leading smart agricultural service provider, with more than 110,000 agricultural drones in operation worldwide, and a cumulative operating area of more than 1.74 billion acres. Its “Beidou + RTK” high-precision navigation system achieves tractor seeding and fertilization errors of ≤±2.5cm, supports unmanned operations at night and intelligent obstacle avoidance. The technology has been applied to national demonstration areas such as Northeastern black soil and Xinjiang cotton fields, and its market share ranks second in the world;
Hezhong Strong: Its “Huinong” brand is the leader in Beidou precision agriculture. It provides agricultural machinery automatic driving systems that cover the entire process of “cultivation, planting, management, and harvesting”. It integrates satellite leveling, diagonal operations, intelligent spraying and remote operation and maintenance functions. The operating efficiency is increased by 30% and the land utilization rate is increased by 5-15%. The product has been selected into the TOP50+ awards of China’s agricultural machinery and is widely adapted to mainstream agricultural machinery brands;
Wuhan Yixun Beidou Time and Space: A national-level specialized and innovative “little giant” enterprise, the Beidou agricultural service management platform has been widely promoted and applied in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hubei, Liaoning, Sichuan, Ningxia, Xinjiang and other places. The operations include harvesting, weeding, straw return to the field, rice transplanting, deep loosening and other activities. The system enters the Hubei Province agricultural machinery purchase subsidy directory;
Guozhiheng Beidou Good Nianjing Agriculture: A joint venture between Guozhiheng Beidou Technology Group and Henan Haonianjing established a “Beidou + high-resolution remote sensing” agricultural big data system. In 2019, Henan Province’s first agricultural remote sensing satellite “Zhongyuan Jinshui-1” was successfully launched to carry out crop census, disaster assessment and food safety traceability, and build a national agricultural monitoring platform.
6) Public safety
Beijing Huachen Beidou: Successfully won the bid for the “National Fire Rescue Bureau Mobile Detachment Individual Soldier Beidou Positioning Terminal Purchase Project” and provided the “GISA Z20” Beidou Positioning Terminal, which supports centimeter-level real-time positioning, trajectory playback and one-click SOS alarm. It has been deployed on the national fire rescue frontline and is a core supplier of national-level emergency rescue individual soldier equipment;
Dingjian Communications: Focusing on the research and development of public security law enforcement terminals, it launched the “Single Beidou explosion-proof law enforcement recorder” series, which supports Beidou independent positioning, 4K high-definition video, infrared night vision, explosion-proof design and real-time cloud synchronization. The product was selected as a key display project at the Chengdu Smart Expo and has been installed in public security systems in many places across the country. It is a deep adapter manufacturer for the GA/T 947 series standards of the Ministry of Public Security.
(2) Satellite remote sensing industry chain
my country’s satellite remote sensing industry chain mainly includes: upstream (construction of ground stations, measurement and control stations and meteorological stations) and downstream (application services in natural resources, ecological environment, housing and construction, agriculture, meteorology, emergency disaster reduction and other fields).
1. Upstream industries: construction of satellite remote sensing ground stations/measurement and control stations/weather stations
China Electronics Technology Institute 54: The core design and construction unit of domestic satellite measurement, control and communication systems. It is responsible for the development of measurement and control systems for major national projects such as the Shenzhou series, Tianwen-1, Fengyun Meteorological Satellite, etc. It has full-link capabilities such as deep space measurement and control, multi-satellite unified measurement and control, and high-speed data transmission. Its measurement and control stations are spread across the country, supporting the on-orbit management and command input of more than 90% of my country’s in-orbit satellites;
Aerospace Yuxing: China’s first third-party commercial satellite measurement and control service provider, has built the country’s first commercial satellite measurement and control network covering the entire territory, operates more than 10 ground stations in Ningxia Zhongwei, Inner Mongolia, and Hainan, providing integrated measurement and control, data transmission, and calibration services. The localization rate of self-developed ground station equipment exceeds 90%;
Oneworld Satellite: The Oneworld Satellite Measurement and Control Center has three satellite measurement and control halls, which can meet the measurement and control needs of multiple launch sites and multiple satellites launched at the same time; it has one comprehensive monitoring hall that can realize centralized and unified monitoring of on-orbit satellites, central computer systems and measurement and operation control equipment, and can meet the needs of long-term measurement and control management of more than 500 in-orbit satellites and more than 10 large satellite constellations;
Huayun Meteorology: An enterprise directly under the China Meteorological Administration, it is responsible for the development and integration of 7 Fengyun meteorological satellite ground application systems, nearly half of national-level ground meteorological observation stations, and two-thirds of weather radars. It builds a “satellite + radar + automatic station” trinity observation network to provide full-chain services for meteorological data reception, processing, and distribution. Its products are exported to more than 40 countries. It is a leading force in the localization and intelligence of meteorological equipment.
2. Downstream applications and services:
1) Natural resources
4D Surveying and Mapping: It is a professional company of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation to develop the remote sensing satellite application industry. It is a leading commercial remote sensing service provider in China. It operates a high-view satellite constellation and provides optical and radar remote sensing data. It is widely used in natural resource management scenarios such as ecological protection and restoration, smart water conservancy, digital countryside, and land and space monitoring;
21st Century Space: China’s commercial aerospace remote sensing pioneer, independently operating the “Beijing Series” remote sensing satellites, including Beijing-1, Beijing-2 and Beijing-3 satellite constellations, providing full-chain services from data acquisition to comprehensive application, supporting the modernization of the national governance system and dynamic monitoring of resources and environment;
Changguang Satellite: China’s first commercial remote sensing satellite company has built the world’s largest sub-meter-level commercial remote sensing constellation “Jilin-1”, which provides high-frequency, high-resolution image support for natural resource censuses and is widely used for cultivated land monitoring, forest coverage assessment, etc.;
Aerospace ambition: Focus on integrated spatio-temporal data services for communication, navigation and remote control, independently develop PIE (Pixel Information Expert) remote sensing processing platform, and provide intelligent remote sensing monitoring solutions for natural resources, emergency management, ecological environment and other fields;
Hangyu Micro: Constructs and operates the commercial remote sensing micro-nano satellite constellation “Zhuhai No. 1”, combines multi-source big data such as aerial remote sensing, the Internet of Things, social and humanistic economics, etc., to monitor changes in natural resources such as mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes and grass, conduct rapid and accurate monitoring and analysis in multiple fields, and regularly form special application reports for various industries, analyze change information and trends, and provide the basis for the government’s precise decision-making and refined management;
Guoyuan Xintiandi: China’s leading remote sensing big data service provider, established in 2004. Headquartered in Chaoyang District, Beijing, it focuses on remote sensing data services and three-dimensional spatial information software research and development, supporting national aerospace engineering and natural resource monitoring and other fields.
2) Ecological environment
Zhongke Star Map: A leading digital earth technology company under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it has created a “Star Map Earth” digital earth platform that integrates remote sensing, GIS and AI technologies to provide visual decision-making support for ecological environment supervision and land and space planning. It has been featured on CCTV many times;
COSCO Environment: a national high-tech enterprise, supported by the technical team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, provides an “ecological monitoring” service model, focusing on sky-ground collaborative environmental monitoring. The service covers 20 provinces and regions across the country, supporting the construction and iteration of professional environmental models such as air quality forecasting, pollution source tracing, and hydrological simulation;
China Science and Technology Satellite: Independently develops SAR remote sensing satellite systems (such as AIRSAT-05 satellite), which are used in sensitive ecological and environmental scenarios such as wetland change monitoring and geological disaster early warning.
3) Housing and construction
Aerospace ambition: Through the PIE-Engine cloud platform and the “Nuwa Constellation” project, a residential and construction remote sensing AI model library is constructed to support the automatic identification of 17 types of incidents such as illegal construction, construction site dust, and enclosure violations in the “smart city” scenario. It has served more than 200 urban smart governance platforms across the country;
Zhongke Earth Star: integrates land space planning and remote sensing services, provides a multi-source housing and construction monitoring solution of “satellites + drones + ground sensing”, specializes in urban underground cavity and building settlement monitoring, serves urban renewal projects in Henan, Hubei and other places, and has Class A surveying and mapping and Class B qualifications for urban and rural planning.
4) Agriculture
Jiahe Technology: A leading company in domestic agricultural remote sensing insurance technology, it has built a “sky, earth and people” integrated monitoring system, with a cumulative monitoring land of more than 1 billion acres and serving 2,700+ customers. Its “Agricultural Insurance Pass” product achieves “accurate underwriting + rapid claims settlement” in agricultural insurance, with an accuracy rate of plot segmentation better than 95%. It was highly recommended by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs’ “China Plant Protection Guide” and was selected as an internationally recognized case by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP);
Sichuan Deep Space: In-depth integration of satellite remote sensing technology and AI. Create a deep learning remote sensing accurate interpretation technology of crop information driven by high-resolution satellite images, which can quickly identify crop distribution and other conditions through satellite images. Using satellite + AI to optimize the work
