Mobile World Congress 2020 has been canceled

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Mobile World Congress (MWC), the trade show hosted annually by GSMA for the mobile industry, has officially been canceled due to fears over the coronavirus. The event was originally scheduled to run from February 24 through February 27 in Barcelona, Spain.

Bloomberg was first to report the news, citing an e-mailed statement from GSMA CEO John Hoffman. In it, he said the virus outbreak has made it “impossible” to hold the event.

As the publication highlights, this is the first time in MWC’s 33-year history that it has been canceled.

I can’t think of any other time that a tech event of this magnitude has been called off, especially less than two weeks out. MWC attracts more than 100,000 participants from around the globe, with five to six percent of them historically attending from China.

So, what happens next? Lots of lost business and headaches, no doubt.

For exhibitors and journalists, there will be plenty of airline and hotel cancellations in their near future. Networking opportunities will be lost. Business deals that would have otherwise taken place will never materialize. I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot of individual smartphone announcements in the coming days and weeks as companies scramble to share news of their latest devices without the aid of a large convention.

Given the number of companies that had already pulled out of the event, however, this outcome wasn’t entirely unexpected.

With any luck, the coronavirus will blow over and by this time next year, it’ll all be a distant memory. The worst thing that could happen is that event organizers and attendees realize that a trade show like this isn’t necessary and that would be very unfortunate.

Masthead credit: Angel Garcia, Bloomberg. MWC by Ivan Garcia.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/83994-mobile-world-congress-2020-has-canceled.html

 

[Skjorn]

Good

 

[cliffordcooley]

It's going to be hard enough getting passed this virus. We can use a little less potential in spreading it around.

 

[brucek]

This was the only responsible decision.

 

[nismo91]

Good call.

airlines are the ones really suffering from this ordeal. I feel for those in the industry.

 

[krizby]

Watched the BBC news and an English businessman caught the corona virus in a conference in Singapore and then spread to 11 "confirmed" others. This virus is seriously infectious man, also the Vaccine is expected to come in 18 months.

 

[brucek]

Per the WSJ a couple hours ago: "China ousted two top Communist Party officials in Hubei province, the center of the new coronavirus outbreak, hours after health officials there confirmed 14,840 new infections on Wednesday alone—an almost 10-fold increase from a day earlier—indicating that the epidemic is far from tapering off."

 

[wiyosaya]

An economic double-whammy? The virus and the tariff wars... Ha! Sounds like a movie title.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Per the WSJ a couple hours ago: "China ousted two top Communist Party officials in Hubei province, the center of the new coronavirus outbreak, hours after health officials there confirmed 14,840 new infections on Wednesday alone—an almost 10-fold increase from a day earlier—indicating that the epidemic is far from tapering off."

When you take over for someone who was fired for incompetence, what is the first thing you do?

Double check the books.

These aren't new infections, they're new reports. If you're trying to prove you didn't make things worse, and in fact made them better, make sure all the screwing up that happened prior to you taking over is properly documented as such.