With the current coronavirus outbreak, it appears that Apple’s upcoming event which is supposed to take place at the end of this month has been cancelled. The Cupertino company was expected to unveil its “iPhone 9“, which is supposedly an iPhone SE successor and their latest generation of iPad Pro.
A few days ago, Jon Prosser of Front Page Tech had tweeted that the event has been cancelled according to his sources in Apple. Later, David Phelan of Forbes has also reported that the March event is not happening as well based on his sources that are close to the matter.
However, it is worth mentioning that the March event has not been announced publicly so there’s no need for Apple to issue any statements for the event. This leaves them with two options, delay the launch for a couple of months until the situation improves or proceed to reveal the products through an online-only event.
It is also worth pointing out that Santa Clara, the county where Apple is located has just announced a ban on all public gathering. All forms of mass gathering are required to be cancelled with effect from 12:00am on 11 March and it will remain for three weeks. This is to contain the spread of the disease especially when there are reported confirmed cases in the county.
According to Santa Clara’s definition, a mass gathering is any event or convening that brings together one thousand or more people in a single room or single space at the same time. This makes it impossible for Apple to hold any keynote events for the time being.
Now there are concerns if Apple’s WWDC 2020 event can still continue due to the current coronavirus situation. This year’s developer conference is expected to take place in early June and it is the venue for Apple to reveal the latest software features and updates to developers in time for final release around September-October. In addition, these delays could potentially affect the release of the iPhone 12 which usually happens in September.
Several key tech events have been cancelled due to COVID-19 and this includes Mobile World Congress and Google I/O 2020. For smartphone makers, most of them have resorted to live stream launches with no attendees on location.
[ VIA ]
