ICT, Health - Companies Pull Out Of Tech Show
The online retailing giant Amazon is the latest company to pull out of a major tech show because of concerns over the 2019-nCoV Wuhan Coronavirus.
The Mobile World Conference is one of the telecom industry's biggest gatherings which attracts over 100,000 visitors to Barcelona, Spain.
Amazon's cloud computing arm AWS was due to host a full-day conference track on the first day of the event, however: "Due to the outbreak and continued concerns about the new coronavirus, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in Mobile World Congress 2020," the company said in a statement, following South Korea's LG Electronics, Swedish equipment maker Ericsson, and US chip maker Nvidia.
The GSMA telecoms industry association, which runs the Congress, says the event will go on as scheduled from 24 - 27 February, with tighter health precautions to safeguard against the coronavirus. Typically, 5,000 - 6,000 attendees come from China. But this year, visitors from China must prove they have been outside the country for two weeks before the event. And no visitors from Hubei Province will be allowed.
Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE will attend and exhibit, ordering their workers to self-isolate for two weeks to ensure they are free of the virus, that causes a pnuemonia-like, respiratory illness that killed more than 900 people since December, the vast majority in China.