The world’s biggest mobile trade show just took another blow graphics giant Nvidia, one of the conference’s sponsors, just announced it’s not sending employees to Mobile World Congress 2020 in Barcelona due to the “public health risks around the coronavirus” that have been putting off some other exhibitors and attendees too.
Already, LG, and Ericsson have said they won’t be attending, and ZTE has canceled its press conference. Huawei and Oppo plan to quarantine their executives for 14 days before MWC starts, and Oppo will check the temperature of every person attending its events. Samsung, the world’s biggest smartphone maker, plans to pare back its presence, people familiar with the matter said, and will send fewer executives from places like the US and Korea.
Nvidia’s the fourth exhibitor to partially or fully drop out of MWC 2020, and the first US company to do so, following Ericsson, LG, and ZTE. But Nvidia was also a major sponsor of the conference, and had partnered with the GSMA conference organizing body to host an entire track of 10 sessions and roundtables around artificial intelligence. It also planned to welcome visitors to an “AI Edge Innovation Center” that would “put attendees at the intersection of AI, 5G and edge computing.”
“We’ve been looking forward to sharing our work in AI, 5G and vRAN with the industry. We regret not attending, but believe this is the right decision,” reads a portion of Nvidia’s statement.
The Mobile World Congress will begin on February 24 in Barcelona, and will bear witness to announcements and demonstrations of a variety of new flagship smartphones and 5G devices.
