NEW DELHI: The government is planning to mandate India-made NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation) system in the future for the automotive industry, said the Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Thursday.
The government, he said, will incentivise mobile manufacturers to adopt NavIC, the desi Global Positioning System (GPS), developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation. US tech giant Apple has incorporated NavIC in the iPhone 15 pro series for location-based services.
“It is for the first time the iPhone 15 has integrated NavIC amongst the other six global positioning system solutions that are available,” the minister said. Chandrashekar informed us that NavIC chips are being manufactured by a startup called Accord.
The company has already manufactured over 1 million NavIC chips in 28 nanometers that are used in the automotive industry. “Increasingly, we will make it mandatory, as in the automobile segment, that all the devices that use GPS deploy the NavIC chipsets as well,” Chandrasekhar said.