MWC 2020 was supposed to be from February 24 to February 27 in Barcelona, Spain, but today the organizers decided to cancel the event because of fears regarding the possible spread of the novel coronavirus.
Companies have been canceling their MWC or pre-MWC events in Barcelona left and right over the past couple of weeks, so this doesn’t come as a huge shock, but it is nevertheless an unprecedented move in the history of the mobile world’s biggest annual event.
The GSM Association (GSMA), which organizes MWC, has so far issued a bunch of reassuring press releases, saying things will proceed as planned. Until today, when apparently its board was hit with the realization that there probably wouldn’t be much happening at MWC anyway, with all the cancellations.
It’s unclear what will happen to the pre-MWC events on February 22 and 23, those which were not canceled prior to this information coming out. Technically none of them is during MWC, or on the premises, so they could still happen – but it’s down to the companies involved to figure things out now. We’re talking about Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Motorola. We will keep you informed of any new developments regarding their events.
The GSMA says it is looking forward to hosting MWC 2021 in Barcelona. The Spanish city has been the home of the annual trade fair since 2006.
Wuhan coronavirus outbreak
The Wuhan coronavirus outbreak is an ongoing epidemic of coronavirus disease 2019 caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus. It was first identified in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province in China, after 41 people presented with pneumonia of no clear cause. It can spread between people. As of 13 February 2020, 60,374 cases have been confirmed (8,047 serious), including in every province-level division of China, but official figures may not have counted a large number of people who have yet to be detected. 1,355 deaths have been attributed to the virus since the first confirmed death on 9 January, with 6,023 recoveries. There have been two deaths outside mainland China: the first in the Philippines, where a man from Wuhan died on 1 February and the second in Hong Kong, where a man who visited Wuhan died on 4 February. On 10 February 2020, the death toll had surpassed the SARS outbreak in 2003.
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