Cancellations and Delays: Tech Industry
For the most up-to-date news and information about the coronavirus pandemic, visit the?WHO website. Several prominent industry events were canceled or revamped because of concerns over the coronavirus. They include:
- IFA The annual electronics trade show in Berlin won’t be canceled, but also won’t proceed in the way it usually does, organizers said in a vague series of tweets on April 21.
- WWDC Apple said on March 13 that its Worldwide Developers Conference will be online only this year.
- Microsoft Build Microsoft announced on March 12 it’s canceling its in-person Build 2020 developer event. The Build show will go on in a virtual way, officials said, in the same mid-May time slot that the regular conference was planned. In April, the company said it’ll make external and internal events digital-only through July 2021.
- E3 The biggest gaming event of the year was scheduled to open June 9 in LA. Some exhibitors, including Microsoft and Ubisoft, will hold online events instead.
- MWC Mobile World Congress, an annual industry gathering that had been scheduled to open on Feb. 24 in Barcelona, was an early casualty.
- Detroit Auto Show The annual North American International Auto Show was nixed after the Federal Emergency Management Administration designated its host venue, the TCF Center, a coronavirus field hospital.
- Facebook F8 Facebook’s March marketing summit and F8 developer conference were both called off.
- Google I/O Android fans will miss out on Google I/O, the company’s biggest event of the year, where the tech giant announces its newest products and initiatives.
- Geneva Motor Show The Geneva Motor Show, one of the largest car shows of the year, was hit after the Swiss government banned all events of 1,000 people or more.
- Adobe Summit The annual Adobe Summit in Las Vegas is off, although some content will be offered online.
- Nvidia GTC The keynote and product announcements for Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference, typically held in San Jose, California, and attracting about 10,000 people, was canceled on March 16. The company earlier announced plans to make the event online-only. Nvidia said it will continue to hold online training sessions starting March 25.
- Snap Partner Summit The annual Snap Partner Summit focusing on messaging app Snapchat will be an online-only event, with a keynote scheduled for April 2.
- GDC The annual Game Developers Conference, originally scheduled to take place March 16 to 20 in San Francisco, has been postponed to an unspecified date after exhibitors such as Amazon, Microsoft, Epic Games, Sony, EA and Facebook dropped out.
- Google News Initiative Summit Alphabet Inc. canceled the Google News Initiative Summit scheduled for late April in Sunnyvale, California.
- Google Next The annual Google cloud conference, which drew 30,000 attendees last year, has been postponed even after it was turned into a digital-only event.
- re:MARS Amazon canceled the upcoming re:MARS conference in Las Vegas, which focuses on AI and robotics and was in its second year. All guests who purchased tickets will receive a full refund of registration fees.
- Dell Technologies World Dell has reportedly told attendees of its 2020 tech conference that it’s been moved to “a virtual setting” due to coronavirus concerns. Keynotes and some sessions will be online, according to the note. Dell Technologies World had been scheduled to go from May 4-7 in Las Vegas. Dell didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
- Photokina 2020 The biggest photography conference in the world, which had been slated to make its move from the fall to May 27-30 this year, was canceled by organizer Koelnmesse on March 18. It’s a biannual show, so that means we won’t see it again until 2022.
- Bethesda digital showcase The Elder Scrolls developer opted not to highlight its upcoming games in June.
- Techonomy East The New York conference, slated to take place May 19-20, has been postponed. There will instead be a free online conference on those days.
