Telecoms lobby GSMA is to hold a board meeting tomorrow to discuss the possible cancelation of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, after several big-name withdrawals because of the COVID-19 outbreak, an industry source said on Tuesday.
MWC, scheduled to take place from Feb. 24 to 27, is the telecom industry’s biggest annual gathering, with companies spending millions on stands and hospitality to fill their order books.
The world event was put in jeopardy after the coronavirus outbreak prompted US technology and telecom heavyweights, such as Cisco Systems Inc, Sprint Corp and Facebook Inc, to pull out.
“Out of an abundance of caution, Facebook employees won’t be attending this year’s Mobile World Congress due to the evolving public health risks related to coronavirus,” Facebook said in a statement.
A number of companies — including AT&T Inc, Ericsson AB, Amazon.com Inc, Sony Corp, NTT Docomo Inc, LG Electronics Co, Intel Corp, Nvidia Corp and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) — had already dropped out of the four-day international conference that draws more than 100,000 visitors.
Adding to the concerns over the impact of the epidemic, the WHO on Tuesday warned of a global threat potentially worse than terrorism.
A cancelation of the event would be a big blow for Catalonia’s capital city.
The congress usually gives a US$500 million lift to the local economy as delegates throng to the trade fairgrounds, wine and dine contacts, and crisscross Barcelona by taxi.
In the event of a full cancelation of the conference, the financial liability for the organizers might depend on whether the Spanish government changes its health advice on COVID-19.
Spanish Minister of Health, Consumer Affairs and Social Welfare Salvador Illa on Tuesday told reporters that there is no public health reason for the event not to go ahead.
Illa added that additional health measures related to the MWC could be announced yesterday. GSMA did not respond to requests seeking comment.
Additional reporting by AP
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
With an approval rating of just two percent, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte might be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters. Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence. The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.” She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is
GROWING CONCERN: Some senior Trump administration officials opposed the UAE expansion over fears that another TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval. The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said. The conversations are a continuation of talks that
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in artificial-intelligence (AI) chips, yesterday said that small-volume production of 3-nanometer (nm) chips for a key customer is on track to start by the end of this year, dismissing speculation about delays in producing advanced chips. As Alchip is transitioning from 7-nanometer and 5-nanometer process technology to 3 nanometers, investors and shareholders have been closely monitoring whether the company is navigating through such transition smoothly. “We are proceeding well in [building] this generation [of chips]. It appears to me that no revision will be required. We have achieved success in designing
RSS