Common sense has prevailed. Or perhaps the great pressure that was hanging over MWC 2020 at this point in the film did. Be that as it may, the GSMA has just confirmed it: Mobile World Congress 2020 is officially canceled.
A situation in extremis and an obvious outcome
Despite the fact that the GSMA has called for calm during all this time, the current situation has ended up going against it. The organization, in charge of managing possibly the most important technological event of the year, has just canceled the Mobile World Congress 2020.
They have been of no use extraordinary measures of hygiene prepared so that no contagion occurs or the repeated speech by the government and the city authorities that there was no danger and we were letting ourselves be carried away by panic and biased information from the media. The different brands in the sector have been falling from a panel of attendees that at the moment was totally devastating.
LG, Sony, Nokia, NTT, Facebook and countless other companies have been giving up their participation in the telecommunications fair par excellence, always appealing to safety and not putting the health of their workers at risk. Nonetheless some firms have continued to show their support to the event as Huawei, OPPO, Samsung, realme or Xiaomi. The same cannot be said of Orange or Vodafone that they have announced today, just a few hours ago, that they also fell off the list.
Even with this, it has been impossible to sustain this situation that has resulted in what we all expected: a cancellation of the event, which was scheduled to open its doors next Monday February 24 (although two days before, as always, the main press conferences for attendees would be held).
Too many people gathered in an environment where the spread of the virus is too easy - its ease of contagion is too high. Spain is still armored against coronavirus but a celebration of this type would have meant the definitive opening of doors for its expansion in the country.
Why has it taken so long to cancel?
That is one of the questions people are asking the most right now. If everything is so obvious and so many brands have fallen, why have they continued to maintain all this until today? According to point in Wired, It is a matter of interests (obviously) and a real battle between the GSMA and Barcelona.
So that the fair can cancel with all the guarantees without having economic repercussions, you need the authorities to declare that there is a health emergency situation. It is the only way that the organization can close doors and grab a cancellation insurance.
Otherwise, the GSMA would face a financial penalty for failing to hold its event without there being "officially" anything to prevent it. There has been the quid of the issue all the time.
And now that?
The big question now being asked by the technology sector is what will happen to the event. Is it going to be done at another time this year? Will we wait for the 2021 edition and the 2020 edition will be marked forever on the calendar for its non-celebration?
The telephone fair could well be moved to another date of the year (after all, we are still in February), but organizing something like this involves too many things: transfers, hotels, organization of the dynamics of the fair and the city itself, availability of the Fira itself (the venue where it is held)…
And that's not to mention the brands and their release dates. If OPPO, for example, was going to show its new phone next Saturday the 22nd at its MWC 2020 press conference, it is unthinkable that it would wait a few months to do so at an MWC held, let's say, in June. And maybe by then it won't be so profitable to go if you don't have another product to present on those dates.
Let's also remember that there are two more MWC on the calendar (although not as important as the one in Barcelona): the one in Los Angeles, in October, and the one in Shanghai, at the beginning of July.
For now in the statement, the GSMA only talks about "will continue working" for MWC 2021 and future editions, which seems to indicate that a MWC 2020 is already completely ruled out.
Update [February 12, 2020 – 22:40 PM]: from the last update of the GSMA we can deduce with little margin of doubt that there will be no MWC 2020. The organization has just opened a page on its official website for information about MWC 2021, which will be held from March 1 to 4 of next year.