India is pushing tech giants to make smartphones compatible with its domestic navigation system within months, worrying the likes of Samsung, Xiaomi and Apple who fear higher costs and disruptions as the move requires hardware changes, according to two industry sources and government documents. And government documents said. Reuters saw.
In line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drive for self-reliance, India has over the years increased its use of a regional navigation satellite system called NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellations).
The Indian government wants to reduce dependence on foreign systems, including the widely used US Global Positioning System (GPS), and says NavIC provides more accurate domestic navigation and its use will benefit the economy.
China, the European Union, Japan and Russia have their own global or regional navigation systems to rival GPS. Operational since 2018, uptake of NavIC is low; This is mandatory in public vehicle location trackers, for example.
But government and industry documents show that Modi’s administration and space officials want to expand its use, and this year the smartphone giant will make hardware changes to support NavIC, in addition to GPS, in new phones it will sell starting in January 2023.
In private meetings in August and September, representatives from Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung Electronics and others pushed back, citing concerns that making phones NavIC-compliant would mean higher research and manufacturing costs.
The changes also require more testing approvals, according to two smartphone industry sources and documents, which will disrupt business and planned launches with a January 1 deadline.
Samsung declined to comment on the meeting, while Apple and Xiaomi did not respond to requests for comment. India’s IT ministry and space agency ISRO, both involved in the project, also did not respond.
Samsung particularly raised concerns at a Sept. 2 closed-door meeting between top smartphone players and chipmakers, including officials from India’s IT ministry and space agency, according to meeting minutes reviewed by Reuters.
Samsung’s India executive Binu George cautioned against cost concerns and told officials that NavIC support would not only require a new smartphone chipset but several other components as well.
“This will add to costs as it requires hardware design changes and additional investment to support India-specific devices. Further, companies are already gearing up for models to be launched in 2024,” the Minutes quoted him as saying.
George did not respond to a request for comment.
Smartphone players have sought time till 2025 to implement the changes and a final decision is expected in the coming days, a senior government official said.
The Indian Space Agency will provide technical support to implement NavIC in new smartphones, another meeting may be convened.
India Vs
India’s space agency has said that systems such as GPS and Russia’s GLONASS are operated by their countries’ defense agencies to allow disruption of civilian services.
NavIC is under the full control of the Indian government, which aspires to take it global like GPS one day.
India is not the first country to pressure smartphone makers to add support for native navigation systems.
Russia has ordered smartphones sold locally to include its own GLONASS system to reduce reliance on GPS, which Washington has cut off to civilian customers in the wake of military operations in Iraq.
China’s Beidou was completed in June 2020 and, although not mandatory, the official Xinhua news agency reported that 94.5 percent of China-made smartphones will support Beidou in 2021.
Xiaomi and Samsung have a 38 percent share of the smartphone market in India, the second largest in the world after China. Apple’s premium smartphones account for roughly 3 percent in India, data from Hong Kong-based research firm Counterpoint shows.
At the Sept. 2 meeting, government minutes show other Chinese manufacturers, which make up another 28 percent of the market, were also present. China’s Realme, which has a 16 percent market share, did not attend, and neither did smaller manufacturers.
Apple’s website states that it already supports five global and regional navigation networks, including GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou, in current iPhone handsets. Indian directives may force new additions to it.
A key concern for players like Samsung and Xiaomi is the high cost of the so-called dual band chipsets they need to support both GPS and NavIC, as these companies dominate the sub-$200 (roughly Rs. 16,300) price segment in India. – Sensitive market, smartphone industry sources said.
Chipset concerns
To procure NavIC-compliant chipsets, most smartphone makers rely on global giants such as US chip designer Qualcomm Inc and Taiwan’s MediaTek.
Parv Sharma, senior semiconductor analyst at Counterpoint, said the voluntary adoption of such chipsets in India is limited because phone manufacturers are reluctant to add the extra components – and costs – required to make them work.
India’s space agency said that by mid-2021, only two dozen mobile handset models in India had NavIC capabilities. There are about 300 in total, Counterpoint said.
During September. 2 meeting, MediaTek said all of the company’s chipsets for 5G phones will support NavIC with “some cost increases” and additional hardware. MediaTek added that about 80 percent of mobile phones will be 5G-enabled within two years.
MediaTek declined to comment on questions from Reuters. Qualcomm said in a statement that it has been working with the Indian Space Agency for several years to enable NavIC on its chipsets and will continue to do so.
Another lobbying push from smartphone players is to convince the Indian government to make it available on the so-called L1 satellite frequencies that are already used by GPS, and not just on the L5 frequencies used by New Delhi.
Executives say it will be easier for manufacturers to integrate NavIC into chipsets that primarily support the L1 band worldwide, curbing separate development costs for NavIC.
Indian space agency ISRO told a September 2 gathering that it was not immediately possible, as NavIC was likely to be available only on the L1 band by 2024-25, after more satellite launches, records of the meeting show.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
