Qualcomm has declared that it will skip Mobile World Congress’ in-person show in Barcelona this year, making it the latest major company to report that it will miss the potential COVID-19 superspreader event in June for an online presence at the show.
Qualcomm decides for a virtual presence
“While we like the health and safety measures being instituted by the GSMA for MWC Barcelona, we have concluded that it is to the greatest advantage of our employees and customers for Qualcomm’s participation to be virtual this year,” the company said in a statement acquired by TechCrunch. Qualcomm is in no way, shape or form the solitary major company choosing an advanced appearance at MWC this year: Google, Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, and Oracle have all pulled out of the current year’s show completely, while Samsung and Lenovo have reported that they will likewise go to carefully rather than their customary in-person appearances.
MWC 2020 was one of the main major gatherings to close down because of the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of the GSMA’s endeavors to attempt to put on the act, even with quickly expanding case numbers all throughout the planet and new travel restrictions. The GSMA is as yet demanding holding the current year’s event with just insignificant COVID-19 mitigation policies, including requesting that attendees have had a negative COVID-19 test inside 72 hours of their arrival and plans for “controlling crowd density” ? neither of which is required to be sufficient to prevent the spread of the Covid at an event this huge.
In 2020, MWC was just dropped after various major organizations (like LG, ZTE, Sony, and Amazon) pulled out of the event. And while the GSMA has given no sign that it’ll be hoping to change its arrangements during the current year’s show yet, it’s conceivable the expanding number of exhibitors that will not be going to could change that.
