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Mobile World Congress is one of the largest technology trade shows. MWC is usually held every year. This has been the case since 1987. Unfortunately, this time is different.
The event's organizer, the GSMA , announced the following. MWC 2020 in Barcelona has been cancelled. This is the first time this has happened in 33 years. What is the reason? An outbreak of the Covid-19 coronavirus is to blame.
The epidemic has frightened many participants. Most of the "giants" have refused to come to MWC 2020. Among them - HMD Global, Facebook, BT, Amazon, McAfee, LG, Deutsche Telekom, Intel, Vodafone, Ericsson, Orange, Vivo, Volvo, ZTE, Sony, Cisco, Nvidia and ZTE.
Not everyone turned away from MWC. Motorola, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Huawei did not chicken out. However, without the others, the show is meaningless. The scale is not the same. That said, this prompted the GSMA to make a drastic decision.
People's safety is more important. However, it was not without disadvantages. Firstly, the budget of Barcelona will lose 500 million euros. MWC creates up to 14 thousand jobs in the city.
Secondly, GSMA will incur financial losses. Huge amounts of money are spent on organizing MWC 2020. It is difficult to compensate them by insurance payments. The Spanish authorities did not declare a state of emergency because of the coronavirus. It has not yet broken out here.