Chinese attendance at MWC will surely be massively diminished

While the world is holding its breath gaping at the worsening coronavirus crisis, China’s leading telecom companies are already putting alternative plans in place.

Most are still planning to attend Mobile World Congress 2020, though with plenty of precautions. The death toll of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak has risen above 1,000, though the new cases reported have declined, according to the official numbers from China. While the world is getting more nervous, with more companies pulling out the upcoming Mobile World Congress, some of the world’s biggest telecom companies based in China, where the epidemic originated, have rolled out alternative plans to cope with the downturn during the crisis and are looking towards the revival afterwards.

All the companies that are still planning to attend the Barcelona event have told the media that they will follow the precaution measures issued by GSMA. However, Telecoms.com has learned from China-based staff of a few global companies, who had planned to accompany their operator customers to the show, that most of the senior representatives from the Chinese operators have scrapped their travel plans. They have found the two-week self-imposed isolation in Europe not practical.

According to a report by Yicai, a Shanghai-based business publication, IDC has estimated that the total smartphone shipment in China will go down by 40% in the first two months of the year, as a result of the epidemic’s battering on the retail industry. Companies like Xiaomi, OPPO, and Vivo, all on the global smartphone leaderboard, have planned to launch new flagship products at the beginning of the year. They have modified the launch plans, if not changing the dates. Xiaomi, for example, has moved the launch event this week online, through live streaming. Honor, Huawei’s sub-brand, is also going to conduct its first launch of the year online.

A source inside OPPO told Yicai that the staff attending MWC have already arrived in Europe, so that they can self-quarantine for two weeks before the show starts. This is similar to the measures ZTE has announced with regard to its senior staff from China to attend the show in Barcelona. Vivo told Xinhua, one of China’s major official propaganda outlets, that its product launch event in China has been moved to online, but the company is going to appear at MWC and will launch its new products to the global markets as planned.

OPPO believes the coronavirus impact on its manufacturing is manageable, as the company has been making phones in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Algeria, in addition to the main production base inside China. Vivo, on the other hand, has extended the Chinese New Year break at its manufacturing facilities till 10 February, as did the biggest OEMs Foxcomm and Inventec.