All Smartphones Must Have NavIC By 2025, Says Rajeev Chandrasekhar This announcement comes after Apple introduced the support for India's navigation system in some of the new iPhone 15 models

Minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that all smartphones will have to support NavIC by the end of 2025. This announcement comes after Apple introduced the support for India's navigation system in some of the new iPhone 15 models.

NavIC has been developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which is a constellation of seven satellites and a network of ground stations operating round the clock.

According to the minister, the inclusion of NavIC on iPhones is a significant achievement for the country. Also, the government is considering making it a standard practice that all devices using GPS technology should have NavIC-powered chipsets inside.

"In line with the incentives that we have announced under the IT hardware PLI (production-linked incentive), where cashback to companies can significantly go up if they use India-designed or -manufactured chips in their systems, we will extend the same idea to the smartphone PLI as well for using domestic chips that support NavIC," Chandrasekhar told reporters on Thursday

As per available sources, the major aim behind India developing NavIC was to reduce dependency on GPS and other global navigation systems which are controlled by other countries.

Under the IT hardware PLI scheme, companies that manufacture laptops, computers and servers and source locally made components, including chips, will get additional incentives.

"When we have a mobile phone grid chip, which is performance-competitive, cost-competitive, we will certainly incentivize mobile phone devices to incorporate that as well."

As per ISRO, NavIC is expected to offer a positional accuracy of 5 metres, compared to 20 to 30 metres offered by GPS.