Samsung cancels physical participation in MWC telecom fair

Smartphone maker Samsung will not be there during the physical version of the Mobile World Congress telecom fair. The fair is still on the schedule, although many of the major exhibitors have canceled.

Samsung will be there during the online version of the fair, reports South Korean Business Standard. The manufacturer says it wants to put ‘the health and safety of staff and partners’ first and to cancel the fair due to the ongoing corona pandemic.

Samsung is not the first to cancel. Network company Ericsson was the first to cancel the participation. Nokia, Sony, Facebook, Cisco, British Telecom and Oracle followed with their cancellations. Google is not coming either.

The fair is due to take place next month in the Spanish city of Barcelona. It is scheduled for June 28 to July 1. The fair usually takes place in February, but the organization moved it to June in the hope that the pandemic would be sufficiently under control by then. The intention is that 50,000 visitors will come to the fair.

The organization says the fair is still going on. Last year, the telecom fair was supposed to take place in February, but it became the first major fair that was canceled due to the corona pandemic. In 2019 there were more than 100,000 visitors at the fair. GSM Shanghai already took place physically in February. There were 17,500 visitors Bee. Many other tech fairs, including E3 and Computex in June, will not take place physically.