Top six smartphone player is latest brand to pull out of MWC 2020

A variety of tech brands have decided to fully or partially withdraw from Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, owing to the major coronavirus outbreak. We’ve previously seen Amazon, Sony, and others announce their intentions to scale back or pull out, and Vivo has become the latest brand to do so.

The Chinese manufacturer announced its plan to completely withdraw from MWC 2020 in an email to Android Authority, citing coronavirus concerns.

“vivo has been closely monitoring the Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP) outbreak and continuously evaluating planned activities,” read an excerpt of the email. “The health and safety of our employees and the public are our top priority. Based on the present situation, we have decided to withdraw from our debut at MWC 2020 and other related events later this month in Barcelona, Spain.”

The manufacturer was slated to show off its 2020 Apex Concept device, the latest in a string of annual concept phones shown off at MWC. vivo said it would show off this new concept “soon” but didn’t give any information on when we can expect to see it.

vivo is perhaps the most high-profile mobile brand to pull out of MWC 2020, as it’s ranked number six in terms of smartphone shipments by Counterpoint Research. Other notable smartphone brands to withdraw from the event or scale back operations include Sony, ZTE, LG, and TCL. You can check out our list of companies withdrawing from MWC 2020 at the previous link.