Coronavirus is a serious problem not only for the smartphone market, but, in general, for the whole world today. This is especially true for the economies of all countries and, in particular, China. The new coronavirus first began to spread in December 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, when an outbreak of pneumonia caused by a previously unknown type of virus was recorded. The first cases were visitors to the seafood market, and later the coronavirus mutated and began to spread from person to person. Currently, the number of cases of coronavirus exceeds 20,000 people, and to be more precise, today this figure is at around 24,348 people, and the number of deaths is close to 500 people. These are quite serious numbers that frighten the whole world. The smartphone market could be seriously affected by the coronavirus. You can track the spread of the virus on the coronavirus.zone website.
Manufacturers began to cancel the release of new products due to coronavirus
Earlier, the company Xiaomi decided to cancel the presentation of the Mi 10 due to the new coronavirus, a representative Xiaomi said. He said that instead of the usual presentation, the company will hold an online event, in simple words, they will offer us an online broadcast, or simply present the product in finished form. The head of the company Black Shark, which is a subsidiary of Xiaomi, said that it was impossible to hold a press conference today due to the epidemic. Nobody wants to risk people's lives. In addition, Xiaomi, presenting Mi 10 as an online broadcast, plans to save a lot of money on renting premises. The release of Mi 10 was scheduled for February 10, but what will please Black Shark is not yet reported. In addition, there was information that the company may cancel its next presentation Honor. It is reported that in 2020 Huawei will present its smartphones in online format. And not so long ago, partners of smartphone manufacturers in Russia announced that due to the coronavirus, supplies of some Chinese devices were stopped, and we are talking about Huawei, Xiaomi, Redmi, ZTE and Lenovo.
However, this is not the only thing that may upset fans of the gadget market, because LG and ZTE have announced that they will cancel their presentations at MWC this year. The Mobile World Congress is a worldwide conference where every year manufacturers from all over the world showcase new products in the world of gadgets. The news that ZTE and LG would not be attending the exhibition came out not too long ago, but almost immediately after that, ZTE reacted to this information, which came from VentireBeat. She stated in Twitter that she will still visit MWC and present various 5G – devices. Probably, there were disputes within the company on this topic, and the source received information that at that time was not yet final, but it is possible that ZTE could merge information that it will not go to the exhibition to see the reaction of the market and fans . But who really can not go is LG, which announced the cancellation of all its events in Barcelona during the MWC exhibition.
The GSM association, which is the organizer of the MWC, is not aloof either. The guys declare that they will take all additional measures to protect the exhibitors. They will offer various medical equipment, medicines, and this year the exhibition will have a policy of no handshakes and a change of microphones according to the protocol. Such an attitude towards exhibitions is a rather serious issue, because today the majority of manufacturers are Chinese who come from China. And the issue of safety in this case comes first.
It is also worth noting that the usual hype around the new coronavirus is not excluded, because 24,000 people is not such a big number against the background of 1 billion people living in China. In addition, China itself controls the situation quite well and restricts visits to various cities infected with the virus. Scientists are currently developing an antiviral drug that would cure people with the new coronavirus. In Russia, not so long ago they announced that they are working on the withdrawal of a strain of a new virus thanks to two infected who came from China to Russia.
The situation is, of course, interesting, and so far there have been no cases of coronavirus infection through parcels (not so long ago we wrote material about whether a virus could get into a parcel from China), but as soon as this happens, perhaps many manufacturers will simply stop producing devices or additional measures will be introduced. However, so far, the virus is not transmitted through various packages of smartphones, so I think there is no need to worry too much about the sale of certain gadgets. And here, rather, the question concerns Apple, it delegated the production of smartphones to Chinese manufacturers. This also applies to Samsung, it outsource cheap phones to other manufacturers, and it is possible that Chinese companies may be among them. I propose to discuss this in Telegram.