Just days after numerous heavyweight communication companies announced that they would not attend Mobile World Congress 2020 in Barcelona due to fears of the coronavirus, the GSMA, the organization that convenes the annual tradeshow, officially canceled the event.
GSMA said they canceled the MWC Barcelona 2020 as a result of the global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concerns and other circumstances. The GSMA will not reschedule the event and will work toward the future edition of the event in 2021.
In the past two weeks, Amazon, LG Electronics, Nvidia, Ericsson, Sony, AT&T, Sprint, Cisco, Facebook, Intel, Vodafone, BT and many others expressed concern regarding the health and safety of their staff because of the coronavirus and canceled plans to attend the event. ZTE and TCL of China canceled press conferences and Huawei and Oppo had placed executives in quarantine to be healthy for the show. In the last few days, Nokia, Royole and Showstoppers have backed out as well.
MWC 2020 is one of the most important tradeshows for wireless and communications companies as it is a launching pad for new devices, services and deals. This year’s show was especially important because of anticipated announcements about 5G technology. With 5G expected to ramp up considerably in 2020, MWC was an important event to see what the world could expect from one of the hottest trends impacting the electronics industry.
Now, companies will be announcing their wares in the coming months to local regions instead.
