Mobile World Congress canceled over coronavirus fears

The deadly Corona virus has infected tens of thousands of people. Now it's shut down the world's biggest front show and put products on hold. Mobile World Congress, the biggest mobile event of the year, and the place we'd normally expect to find all the phones will be buying this year, Has been cancelled. That's already pushing back launches and it could massively affect what phones hit your local store. Not only that, but companies like Apple, Nintendo, and Tesla have been forced to shut down production. That could mean delays in the kinds of products that you can buy in 2020. So how did we get here? Well, Corona virus has people scared. When it first appeared in China., health officials didn't know where it came from or how quickly it spread. We now know that the incubation period, the time between when someone gets infected and when they start showing symptoms could be as long as 14 days. And that's the problem. Not only is Corona virus deadly, but there is a chance that people could be spreading the virus without showing out with symptoms. And that is why the world has gone into lockdown. China has closed factories and retail stores and travel restrictions have been put in place to try and limit the fallout countries like the US issued travel warnings. And routing compulsory quarantine for passengers from China. While that's good for public health, it's bad news for tech. Some of the biggest brands in the world are based in China think Huawei, ZTE, Oper and pretty much every other major tech brand has a presence in China or they rely on the country for manufacturing. Which brings us to Mobile World Congress. In the weeks leading up to the event, Nokia, at&t, Facebook, Intel, Sony, Amazon, Ericsson, Nvidia, Cisco, and more. They all pulled out of the show over health concerns. Other brands canceled press conferences all scaled back the number of executives they plan to send. World's Biggest foreign show without the world's biggest brands yet what exactly a showstopper. In a statement to Bloomberg the CEO of GSM. A the show organizer said the global concern regarding the corona virus outbreak, travel concern and other circumstances make it impossible. So what now? Well, while Apple and Samsung launch their phones away from MWC, the show is pretty much the go to for every other major brand, especially this year. We're expecting 5G handsets from all the major Android brands as well as news from carriers about their 5G plans for this year. So WC was going to be a big deal. We don't know what this means for all the launches that were planned at the show HMD the company behind Nokia has already pushed back its launch and others could follow without those big launches and without the press descending on the show to cover those big launches and to tell you all about it. Things are gonna be a lot harder. Not only that, but [UNKNOWN] you see is a really big show behind the scenes, for brands doing deals with retailers. It could be pretty difficult for some of those smaller companies to get into retailers this year if they aren't having those talks, and that could affect what you buy. The coronavirus is also hitting the rest of the tech world. In January, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, said the closure of factories in China would affect production. The Nikkei Asian Review also reported that 45 million pairs of Apple earpods could stall in the production line because of a shortage of components and labor and that could mean delays for products hitting shelves. And it's not just Apple, the Nintendo, Facebook's [UNKNOWN] Tesla, Nissan, they've all had to close down factories or slow production because of delays in getting parts. Of course, all of these problems pale in comparison to the human impact of the coronavirus. The death toll has already outstripped SARS, and we're seeing new infections every single day. So having to wait a little longer for that gadget, it's certainly not the biggest problem we could be facing. By the way, we haven't seen the end of this crisis.