Coronavirus: MWC Barcelona, world’s biggest mobile trade show, cancelled as firms withdraw over outbreak crisis
- Global concern over the coronavirus outbreak, travel and other circumstances made it ‘impossible’ for organiser GSMA to hold the event
This year’s edition of MWC Barcelona, the world’s biggest mobile industry gathering, has been cancelled less than two weeks before its opening, devastated by the pull-out of major exhibitors over concerns about the coronavirus outbreak.
“With due regard to the safe and healthy environment in Barcelona and the host country today, the GSMA has cancelled MWC Barcelona 2020 because the global concern regarding the coronavirus outbreak, travel concern and other circumstances, make it impossible for the GSMA to hold the event,” said John Hoffman, chief executive of the GSM Association, in a statement late on Wednesday.
London-based GSMA, organiser of the event, represents the interests of more than 750 mobile network operators around the world. “The GSMA and the host city parties will continue to be working in unison and supporting each other for MWC Barcelona 2021 and future editions,” Hoffman said.
Some of MWC Barcelona’s largest participants to recently withdraw include telecommunications equipment suppliers Nokia and Ericsson, as well as mobile network operators Vodafone Group, Deutsche Telekom, AT&T, BT Group, Orange and NTT Docomo.
Other companies that have also dropped out of the event include smartphone vendors Vivo and LG Electronics, chip suppliers Intel Corp and Nvidia, as well as Facebook, Sony Corp and Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing subsidiary of Amazon.com.
The GSMA’s decision not to push through with the event, which was to be held from February 24 to 27, has come as the coronavirus has so far infected more than 44,000 people and killed more than 1,100 in mainland China, with cases reported in more than 20 other countries.
It also comes just days after the GSMA assured participants that MWC Barcelona would go ahead as planned. On Sunday, the group announced the event had “more than 2,800 exhibitors strong” and that stringent measures were being adopted, including banning travellers from China’s Hubei province – the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak. More than 109,000 attendees were expected at the trade show.
“MWC is the event where major mobile tech companies discuss their vision and show off their capabilities,” said Nicole Peng, vice-president of mobility at research firm Canalys. “Its cancellation will, no doubt, result in losses for vendors who had big plans at the event.”
Peng indicated that “it would be difficult to find a bigger stage than MWC this year”.
The first-ever cancellation of MWC Barcelona, which ran as Mobile World Congress since 2006 until a rebranding last year, also deals a big blow to efforts by telecoms carriers, device makers and various tech providers to further promote 5G technology amid new mobile network roll-outs this year.
With peak data rates up to 100 times faster than 4G, 5G is expected to serve as the connective tissue for the internet of things, autonomous cars, smart cities and other new mobile applications.
MWC Barcelona serves as “a catalyst to facilitate the industry’s momentum”, said Bryan Ma, vice-president of client devices research at IDC.
“Many suppliers, including those from China, leverage MWC to connect with customers from around the world,” said Ma. “It is a critical show for telecoms operators to get together with suppliers of infrastructure, handsets, services and so on.”
Canalys’ Peng said many companies, both big and small, may need some time to recover from losses incurred in the cancelled event in Barcelona.
