129 - Identification of Growth Opportunities in PNT Consumer Market

The global GNSS market is predicted to grow considerably in the next decade, with revenues coming from the sale of devices and even more services, and the wider PNT domain revenues are even bigger. Europe share in this market is around 23%, mostly in the professional markets, and it is not expected to increase. Except for few manufacturers located in Europe (e.g. uBlox and STM), the consumer market is typically presided over by non-European companies. Several European stakeholders and organizations wish to try to change this situation. For example, the EC has drawn up the European Chips Act, noting that the EU’s share of the global chip market is only 10%. At ESA, two of the goals for the near future are to “Strengthen European autonomy and resilience” and to “Boost Growth and competitiveness”. The ESA GSTP program is investing millions in the development and manufacturing of integrated circuits for space infrastructure. The NAVISP Advisory Committee has recommended in the recent past the Programme to devote budget to more risky developments of PNT microchips. At Member States level, GNSSs, PNT and Space systems in general are recognized as providing considerable economical value, with related products and services bearing strategic importance, and requiring important focus and investments. One recent example representing this direction is the 1.3B€ investment by the Italian government, for a total investment value of 3.2 B€, with the Singaporean company Silicon Box in a new “chiplet” factory in the Piedmont region, in Northern Italy.

The objective of the proposed activity is to identify the PNT technologies that could be incorporated into products and services for consumer applications, following the renovated interests of ESA member states in European industrial and supply chain autonomy and resilience.

The tasks to be performed shall include:

•  Review of the state of the art in technologies employed for the realization of PNT consumer product and services, both hardware and software;
•  Analysis of the trends and identification of the gaps that are considered worth filling;
•  Derive recommendations for endorsing an existing trend also in the European industry or for filling an identified and promising gap that could give an advantage to European industry, in particular in the field of microelectronic chipsets, “chiplet”, Systems-On-Chip, ASICs, FPGAs, Photonics Integrated Circuit, Approximate Computing, leveraging possibly on the novel Platform-as-a-service business model, and in the related SW components;
•  Identification of the potential industrial actors and possible activities outlines.

The main output of the activity will consist of:

•  Final report demonstrating and justifying the potential technologies which might increase the European industry capability to compete for the delivery of PNT products and services to global consumers;
•  Identification of industrial players, and description of potential activities.

It is noted that no Participating States expressed an opt-out for this activity (EL1-129).