Corona deals a blow to technology and conference industry companies

The negative repercussions of the new Corona virus on the information technology industry have escalated over the past days, and have taken an accelerated path, as fears of the spread of the virus, the organizers of the largest annual conference and international mobile phone exhibition, forced it to be canceled, threatening to deal a devastating blow to the conferences and exhibitions of technology on the agenda of 2020 And threatens to abolish it, as major technology companies announced the impact of their work on the epidemic, whether by obstructing the supply and supply chain and distribution channels, or restricting the travel of their employees around the world, or by stopping and freezing their activities in China and other regions where the epidemic began to expand.

Phones gallery

The biggest blow to the technology industry this week was the announcement by the International GSM Association, which is responsible for organizing the Barcelona Mobile World Congress and Exhibition on February 12, to cancel this year’s session of the exhibition, by a decision of the association’s board of directors, due to Corona virus, and the fear that the conference will turn into a pandemic, given that more than half a million people will gather in the conference and exhibition, whether as participants, experts, exhibitors or visitors.

Painful losses

John Hoffman, CEO of the International GSM Society, said in an official statement that global concern about the outbreak of the Corona virus, travel anxiety and other circumstances made it impossible for the association to organize the event, noting that the association initially responded to the exhibitors' concerns Increasingly, measures were taken to prevent the exhibition and conference headquarters from becoming a focus of the epidemic, but these precautions were not sufficient to discourage many companies from withdrawing from participation, or to dispel the concerns of exhibitors and participants, hence the decision to cancel the exhibition entirely, although The decision is a major blow to the association and its business, And technical companies, especially small companies that were still planning to attend and participate, and invested a lot of money in this.

The South Korean company LG was the first to withdraw from the exhibition, followed by companies: AT&T, Facebook, Amazon, Deutsche Telekom, NVIDIA and AMD. .

In turn, Ben Wood, the senior researcher at the CCS Insight consultancy and research, said that the GSM Association had been a victim of circumstances beyond its control, and that the cancellation decision casts deep concerns and much ambiguity about the fate of all the planned international conferences and exhibitions. It was held this year in different regions of the world, whether at the local, regional, continental or international levels, which constitutes a painful blow to the exhibition and conference industry, which will not be recovered quickly.

Tech giants

In addition, techrepublic.com analysts at TechRepublic.com, a specialist in technology, issued an expanded report on the implications of the virus on the technology industry, in which they clarified that the number of major technology companies that have almost certainly been exposed to negative impacts due to the epidemic reached 12 companies, namely: « Apple, Google, LG, ZTE, Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, Airbunn, Uber and Ericsson , "Foxson" and "NVIDIA".

Analysts pointed out that the impacts that have occurred so far include disruption of the supply chains of components of devices and equipment made in China, due to restrictions on travel to and from China, and strict quarantine procedures, pointing out that all these repercussions are "contractive" measures that limit The movement of production, sale and marketing, and the smooth movement of components, inventory and shipments.

Apple has closed all iPhone stores and its call centers in China. Dealing with component suppliers in the affected Wuhan region has stopped, and Google has done the same and temporarily closed all offices in China and Hong Kong. As for "Amazon", it said that it restricted commercial travel to and from China until further notice. Tesla also closed its factory in Shanghai, while Airbn Travel and Reservations confirmed that it has opened the way to cancel any bookings it has for reasons related to the spread of the virus, without fines on the two barriers, although this measure will affect them financially.

Digital encounters with the virus

Information technology has entered the battlefield against the virus, as the World Health Organization and some specialized agencies of the United Nations announced the creation of an instantaneous three-dimensional map, to track and monitor the rates of virus spread, and the map works with geographical information systems, and provides multiple layers of data, including injuries, deaths and confirmed cases, according to Country, and display them in drawings, visual forms and 3D scenes. The map also contains colorful animations that monitor the movement of the virus and its spread around the world.

The World Health Organization has also collaborated with research centers to launch a "live dashboard" about the virus, titled gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/ apps /

The opsdashboard that tracks the Corona virus on a real-time map, pulls data from the World Health Organization and disease control centers in the United States, Europe and China, to show all confirmed and suspected cases of the Corona virus.

Also, social networks, specifically "Twitter" and "Facebook", are being used to conduct real-time analyzes of the big data circulating through the virus between users of the two networks.