CEO DATELINE - Trade show news: IFA Berlin is canceled, MWC Barcelona loses exhibitors
CEO DATELINE - Trade show news: IFA Berlin is canceled, MWC Barcelona loses exhibitors
- May 19, 2021 |
-
Kathryn Walson
One major European trade show has been canceled and another continues to lose in-person exhibitors because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Consider joining CEO Update. Membership gives full access to the latest intelligence on association management, career advancement, compensation trends and networking events, as well as hundreds of listings for senior-level association jobs.
IFA Berlin 2021, billed as the world's leading industry event for consumer electronics and home appliances, was canceled May 19 amid alarm over an infectious variant of COVID-19 that has caused widespread death in India and has since spread to Europe. The show had been scheduled for Sept. 3-7.
"Unfortunately, the latest public health developments introduced too much risk into everybody's planning for the event," Kai Hillebrandt, board chair of event organizer gfu Consumer & Home Electronics, said in a statement. "There simply are now too many uncertainties. Therefore, right now it has become near impossible for anyone to responsibly plan their participation in any trade show."
Vaccine rollouts and the resumption of international travel "did not happen at the pace we had hoped for," Hillebrandt continued.
Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona, known as the world's biggest smartphone trade show, was postponed from February to June 28-July 1. But companies continue to drop out of the physical show with little more than a month to go. South Korean tech giant Samsung, the biggest phone company in the world, will not participate in-person, TechCrunch reported May 11. Qualcomm also dropped out of the physical show in recent days, adding to a growing list of major companies including Sony, Ericsson, Nokia and Google that will not attend. MWC 2020 was canceled.
European authorities are on high alert for the COVID variant that caused devastation in India before spreading to Britain, Reuters reported May 18. Nearly 200 residents of two tower blocks in a town in western Germany were put under quarantine this week after a woman was diagnosed with the Indian variant, according to Reuters.
IFA has drawn 200,000 attendees in the past, but the 2020 event took place mostly virtually. The next show is scheduled for September 2-6, 2022.
A May 19 tweet on IFA's Twitter page stated: "We planned, hoped and tried to make the impossible possible—and yet had to cancel #IFA2021. We're #heartbroken, but full of confidence for #IFA2022!"
MORE CEO DATELINE