Amazon and Sony are the latest big names to pull out of MWC 2020 in Barcelona,. The companies follow Ericsson, LG, Nvidia and Viavi in withdrawing from the event over concerns over the coronavirus outbreak. Sony was due to exhibit at the main MWC event, while Amazon was due to take part in the 4YFN (Four Years From Now) event.

In a statement shared with Reuters, Amazon said: “Due to the outbreak and continued concerns about the new coronavirus, Amazon will withdraw from exhibiting and participating in Mobile World Congress 2020.”

In its statement, Sony said: “Sony has been closely monitoring the evolving situation following the novel coronavirus outbreak, which was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization on January 30th, 2020.

“As we place the utmost importance on the safety and wellbeing of our customers, partners, media and employees, we have taken the difficult decision to withdraw from exhibiting and participating at MWC 2020 in Barcelona, Spain.”

Sony’s press conference scheduled to take place at 8:30am (CET) on 24 February will now be broadcast at that time on Sony’s official Xperia YouTube channel.

The loss of Amazon and Sony from the line-up is another major blow for the GSMA which organises the event. Only yesterday, it put out another statement, reiterating its commitment to staging the event, and pointing out that while it had lost some large exhibitors, it still had 2,800 companies committed to exhibiting at the show. After these latest withdrawals, however, many of those will no doubt be considering their options.