Amazon pulls out of the Mobile World Congress due to Coronavirus concerns

The Mobile World Congress (MVC), all set to start on the 24th of this month is quickly losing many of the big names of the tech industry. The latest withdrawal is by none other than Jeff Bezos’s Amazon. The withdrawal came after many giants of the technological industry, like LG, NVIDIA, and Ericsson also withdrew over concerns related to the newly discovered Coronavirus. Sony also withdrew alongside Amazon in the past week.

Although Amazon wasn’t planning on announcing any major devices or upgrades to their software at the event, losing all of these tech giants in a short amount of time surely hurts the attendance of the MVC, which is all set to take place in Barcelona, Spain this year.

There are no talks of the event getting cancelled as yet. On the contrary, the announcement was made that the trade show will go on and take place on the said dates (February, 24th-27th, 2020). Extra precautions have also been put in place to minimize the spreading of the deadly virus. These include an outright ban on anyone who belongs to or has visited the Chinese province of Hubei (the birthplace of the Coronavirus). All guests will also have to go through a screening process and anyone who has visited China in the past 14 days will be refused entry at the gates.

The event is still a whole of two weeks away and many tech giants such as Samsung, IBM, HP, and Cisco are still scheduled to appear. However, with the number of people infected with the Coronavirus increasing by the day, there’s a good chance a few more of those names might not make it to Barcelona at the end of the month.