Due to the great fear that the Coronavirus has generated From being able to spread and get out of control, the WHO, governments worldwide, as well as multinational companies have taken radical measures to be able to maintain a control of infection to the least since for several weeks conferences, travel restrictions, among other actions have been canceled.
On the technology side, the coronavirus has already caused the cancellation of nine conferences Tech highlights including Google I / O, Facebook's F8 event, Mobile World Congress, and now SXSW.
All of this has already exceeded a billion dollars in losses, according to estimates by data intelligence company PredictHQ. This number only covers losses suffered by airlines, hotels, restaurants, and transportation providers that would normally make money from participant purchases, it doesn't even include tickets from the companies involved.
About $ 480 million (the biggest loss) are due to the cancellation of the Mobile World Congress, which would host more than 100,000 participants in Barcelona last month.
SXSW follows, a technology, music and film conference in Austin that drew some 280,000 participants last year and whose recently announced cancellation could result in direct losses of $ 350 million.
And we can also mention the Game Developers Conference which has been growing year after year and in which at least 30,000 people were expected.
While a number of events, including Facebook F8 and Adobe Summit, will still be held online, this effort does not prevent significant financial loss from cancellation of the physical event.
These cancellations occur when more than 3,400 people have died and more than 100,000 have been diagnosed with coronavirus.
Many tech companies, including Twitter and Square, they have offered their employees to work from home. Several other large companies, such as Amazon, have canceled non-essential trips, including international ones.
References to working from home also skyrocketed in transcripts from state-owned companies last month. If more companies follow the lead of these big tech companies, this could lay the groundwork or at least be a test of people's ability to work at home en masse rather than in the office.
The effect of the disease is also felt in manufacturing in the tech industry. Supply chain analytics provider TrendForce has released a report that breaks down its ratings into individual components as well as product categories to provide an overview of the industry.
Here are some:
- Smartphone production is expected to decline 12% year-over-year this quarter, becoming the lowest quarter in five years.
The supply chain is labor intensive and therefore is strongly affected by the postponement of the resumption of work, and there will also be a shortage of bottom-up components, such as camera modules. - Various fiber optic providers They are based in Wuhan and together account for 25% of world production. The deployment of 5G in China could be affected due to the increased need for fiber optic cables in next generation base stations.
- The DRAM and NAND flash memory markets are unlikely to be affected due to material storage and a high level of automation in semiconductor factories operated by companies such as Samsung and SK Hynix.
- The manufacture of video game consoles has been greatly affected, But next-gen production is not expected to be affected as long as the epidemic can be eased by the end of this quarter, as the PS5 and Xbox Series X will be affected released during the holiday season.
Current demand for PS4 and Xbox One has already waned due to the pre-sales of the new consoles, which means that there could be a shortage of consoles that were contemplated for the demand that would be generated after