Coronavirus to Hit Mobile World Congress Attendance

Mobile World Congress Barcelona, which takes place every winter, is like Cannes for smartphone geeks. Last year, nearly 110,000 people from 198 countries attended the agenda-setting event for mobile operators, manufacturers, tech vendors, and content studios.

This year, the show is scheduled to take place from Feb. 24–27 and features the tagline, "Limitless intelligent connectivity." But MWC20 is facing one big snag: coronavirus.

What's the latest news?

Not good. The show banned attendees from China's Hubei province and will require anyone who's been to China to prove they have been outside the country for 14 days before the event (meaning they'd need to leave China today to make it to MWC).

Chinese companies are central players in the global phone game. Huawei is the world's second largest smartphone manufacturer and largest networking infrastructure provider. But the coronavirus outbreak has virtually ground China's economy to a halt and forced many tech companies to direct their massive workforces to WFH.

Misery loves companies

As of this morning, Sony and Amazon are out. LG and Ericsson announced last week that they would pull out, citing the coronavirus outbreak. Even though it was one of MWC20's biggest sponsors, Nvidia will not send any employees to the show. Samsung is reportedly scaling back its attendance. And Huawei, ZTE, TCL, Oppo, Vivo, Qualcomm, and Motorola are taking cautionary measures because of the outbreak.

Should the show go on…

...what will the talking points be? Certainly 5G, which you've already heard plenty about from T-Mobile CEO John Legere's sponsored tweets. And U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, nervous about the relationship between Beijing and Huawei, has floated the idea of acquiring a controlling stake in Ericsson or Nokia.

Big picture: Cutting-edge industry shows are globalized affairs. The people, parts, and tech standards that develop 5G or AI come from all over the place, including China.

+ While we're here: "A very large number of participants based in China" couldn't come to the AAAI-20 conference currently taking place in NYC.