MILAN, Feb. 13 (Class Editori) -- The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona will not take place because of coronavirus. For the first time since the inauguration in 2006, the historical consumer electronics exhibition will be cancelled. The confirmation, after the desertion of many top players, has been released by the Board of Directors of GSMA, the governing body of the association of the operators who organize the exhibition.
The decision has been taken considering the global concerns related to the epidemic, which has already caused 1,300 deaths, as well as 59,000 infection cases in the whole China, mostly in the Hubei province. Taking into account the concerns related to journeys and "other circumstances", the organization declared that it would have been impossible to confirm the opening of the exhibition, which last year attracted in Barcelona 110,000 visitors from all over the world, including journalists, insiders and operators of the mobile sector.
The leaders of the sector which decided to not attend the exhibitions include, among the others, LG, Sony, Ericsson, Nokia, Nvidia, Intel Amazon. Few hours before the definitive cancellation of the event, the Chinese groups were instead ready to fly to Spain, although with the precautionary measures needed. In view of the meeting between Huawei and Oppo, they had decided to keep their staff in a quarantine period outside China for almost two weeks. Zte has cancelled the scheduled press conference but the presence at the exhibition, where it should have presented a series of new 5G terminal devices, had been confirmed.
The meeting cancellation due to the Covid-19 epidemic could now inflict a serious blow to Chinese producers' ambitions on foreign markets. On the other side, one difficulty related to the virus has been represented by a fall risk in Smartphone sales by 30 percent in the People's Republic of China. According to the research company TrendForce, unsatisfactory signs have arise from the expected slowdown in Smartphone production by 12 percent during the first quarter of 2020.
Therefore some producers would like to postpone new products' launch. This is Vivo's case, which, according to TechNode website, has deferred the new FindX2 presentation to mid-March. Even Xiaomi, which should have hold a press conference on the next February, 23 has postponed the Mi10 launch. (All rights reserved)
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