Japan's Navitime has announced that it will open voice-activated global positioning services (GPS) in 51 cities across China this week in cooperation with China Unicom (CHU).

The service will be mainly oriented towards China Unicom's GPS mobile phone users, providing them necessary navigation service in the form of text, maps and voice communications. In addition, the service can be used to provide voice-based instruction via GPS phones.

During the initial stage, the full service will only be available in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, but it is expected to be expanded to 114 Chinese cities by the end of 2005.