Mobile World Congress 2020 is scheduled to begin on February 24, but today (February 4), two major cell phone manufacturers announced that they will not participate in the event due to concerns over the coronavirus outbreak.

First, ZTE announced its intention to withdraw, while the GSMA (the organization that runs the Mobile World Congress) reaffirmed its intention to continue hosting the convention. Event organizers said they are taking various measures to mitigate the spread of the virus and ensure the health of attendees, including "enhanced cleaning and disinfection programs at all mass touch points." [But hours later, LG followed ZTE's lead and canceled its participation, saying, "This decision removes the risk of exposing hundreds of LG employees to international travel, which is already highly restricted as the virus continues to spread across borders."

"Instead of participating in MWC, LG will host another event in the near future to unveil its 2020 mobile products," the company statement said.

While ZTE and LG have opted not to participate, the GSMA is clearly still committed to the MWC, so all eyes are on other big-name MWC participants, including Huawei, Microsoft, and Samsung. Even if the conference is technically still going on, the absence of so many major players could render the conference moot.

For what it is worth, it is unclear to what extent concerns about the coronavirus played a role in these companies' decision to cancel. For example, a ZTE spokesperson told The Verge that the decision to cancel was partially the result of travel and visa delays due to the coronavirus outbreak; LG focused its statement entirely on the coronavirus, but if the company was already planning a lighter MWC and had made few announcements it might have been easier to cancel the plan.

In any case, MWC 2020 is in jeopardy because of the coronavirus, which has claimed over 300 lives and infected over 20,000 people as of this writing. We will be closely monitoring the news surrounding the event over the next few days.