LG announced last week that they’d be avoiding MWC 2020 to potentially protect their employees from getting sick or infected with the current outbreak of coronavirus, and we noted that they probably wouldn’t be the last to pull out of the event. We’ve got several more companies and partners that have announced that they’re out, too, and what their alternatives will be.
LG drops out first
LG was the first major name to leave the conference, simply dropped a press release that they made the move to protect employees. Instead of announcing 2020 mobile products at MWC 2020, they’ll be holding some other press events in the near future to showcase what they’ve got planned for this year.
Unfortunately this means that we probably be seeing much from LG at this event at all, even in the announcement category.
More cancellations and some YouTube announcements
Following LG’s lead, other companies, including Amazon, ZTE, Ericsson, NVIDIA, and Sony have pulled out of the event. Some of those companies, like Amazon, generally don’t announce a ton of stuff at MWC 2020, anyway, so we won’t be missing too much.
Others, like ZTE and Sony, rely on the event to show off new phones early in the year. To make up for that, Sony is planning on doing all of their announcements on the Xperia YouTube channel, which is what I expected most companies to do. We’ll still be seeing those announcements, just not hands-on at the event.
TCL sent out a press release this morning that they’ll be skipping their planned press event at MWC 2020, but they will still have a booth to showcase some products. That’s a half-measure that looks to mitigate potential exposure without avoiding the conference entirely.
While all of this might sound pretty scary, it really is just preemptive measures that probably err on the side of caution. The GSM Association, who organizes MWC each year, already has quite a few policies in place to limit the event being a hotspot of infection.
They’ve instituted a no handshake policy, and they’ll be restricting visitors from China’s Hubei province where the outbreak originally started. Additionally, you’ll have to prove that you’ve been outside of China for at least two weeks before being allowed access, which is probably going to hamstring some Chinese companies but should also keep the general public at the event safe.