Nokia cancels participation at MWC 2020 in Barcelona

Finnish telecom firm Nokia, US networking giant Cisco on Wednesday announced to have canceled their participation in the Mobile World Congress 2020 due to novel coronavirus outbreak. Many big and small firms have announced their withdrawal from the world's largest telecom sector event that is held every year in February at Barcelona in Spain.

"Nokia has taken the decision to withdraw from MWC 2020 after a full assessment of the risks related to a fast-moving situation. The primary focus has been to safeguard the health and well-being of employees and others while also recognizing the responsibility to the industry and customers," the Finnish firm said in a statement. Following Nokia's withdrawal, HMD Global, which sells Nokia brand mobile phones, also canceled its participation in the MWC 2020.

Ericsson has already announced to have pulled out of the event. This withdrawal leaves only Huawei, ZTE and Samsung among top telecom network gear maker firms continuing with their plans to participate in the MWC 2020. Many leading companies including LG, Vivo, NTT Docomo, Sony, Amazon, Facebook, Mediatek, Intel, Nvidia etc have withdrawn their participation from the annual telecom sector event.

"We have made the difficult decision to withdraw from participating in Mobile World Congress scheduled for February 24-27 in Barcelona due to concerns about the current outbreak of Coronavirus," Cisco said in a statement. GSM Association, the organiser of Mobile World Congress, said that the coronavirus issue has created disruption for attendees especially 5,000-6,000 attendees from China. However, the global telecom industry body maintained that the event will continue as per schedule with extra precautions and stringent screening mechanism.

"We are grateful for the preventative measures our Chinese exhibitors have put in place, notably ZTE and Huawei. Today, the GSMA is moving ahead as planned and will host MWC Barcelona 24-27 February 2020. While the GSMA confirms some large exhibitors have decided not to come to the show this year with others still contemplating next steps, we remain more than 2,800 exhibitors strong," GSMA said in reply to an email query on Tuesday.