Coronavirus worry clouds the MWC2020 Show
MWC 2020, the mobile industry’s largest tradeshow, is slated to open its doors in Barcelona in two weeks, yet the talk of this week will not be about guessing the who and what of new launches. Rather, all eyes are focused on if any other companies choose to drop out. So far LG, Ericsson, Nvidia and Amazon have dropped out, while ZTE and Samsung are scaling back activities. Despite the dropouts, GSMA has confirmed that the show will go on, and that it is implementing additional measures to ensure the safety of its attendees. Some of the noticeable measures include the ban of attendees from China’s Hebei region as well as the ban of anyone who has been in mainland China in the past 14 days prior to the debut date (February 24) of the show and a no handshake (!) policy in the fairgrounds. Fist-bumps are, so far, still permissible.
The NPD Take:
- Heavyweight vendors such as LG, Ericsson, Sony and Amazon’s decision to skip the show may convice other exhibitors who are weighing their options to do the same in the coming days. On the other hand, GSMA’s commitment to keeping the show running and the latest announcement of banning attendees from high-risk areas should provide peace of mind.
- The dropout of some of the prominent brands will undoubtfully limit general attendance compared to past years, but those brands such as Motorola, TCL, and Xiaomi who are scheduled to make new device announcements at the show will certainly enjoy more exposure due to the lack of presence of their major rivals.
TCL pulling the plug on Blackberry
TCL, which has the licensing agreement to make BlackBerry phones, last week announced that it will make no more and sales of Blackberrys will cease from Aqugust 2020. Since TCL got he licensing agreement, the OEM has launched several BlackBerry smartphones such as the BlackBerry KEYOne, Motion, KEY2, and KEY2 LE with the goal of reviving the nostalgic brand, which had a serious follower base thank mainly to the classic physical keyboard featured on the phones.
The NPD Take:
- The BlackBerry was the precursor to the modern-day smartphone, and there’s a reason why it was dubbed a “crackberry.” But those days are long gone and TCL needs to focus on building its own brand instead. According to NPD’s Mobile Phone Tracking service, TCL was not even able to push 75K units of the BlackBerry phone in the U.S. and Canadian (home of RIM/BlackBerry) markets combined in 2019.
- What made BlackBerry super popular among consumers back in the day was its physical keyboard. Consumers have moved onto touchscreen typing and with voice dictation and a big screen is more important than a keyboard. The story on the enterprise side, on the other hand, was all about BlackBerry’s end-to-end encryption service. With privacy becoming a key selling point, the BlackBerry might still have some juice left for another licensing play.
Motorola battling on all fronts
Motorola last week announced two new G series phones, the G Power and G Stylus. The new G Power is the update to last year’s G7 Power phone, and like its predecessor, it stands out with a massive 5,000 mAH battery that can last for up to three days with a single charge. The new G Stylus, on the other hand, has a built-in stylus (hence the name), and is clearly targeted at LG’s highly popular Stylo series. In other news, Motorola pushed back against a CNET story that claimed that the hinge on the new foldable razr breaks after 27K attempts on their hinge open-close tests. According to Motorola, the new razr can stand the 100K hinge flips, and that CNET used the wrong machine to test the razr.
The NPD Take:
- Motorola is coming for LG. The G series phones have made Motorola one of the fastest-growing brands in the U.S. smartphone market and the new G Power and Stylus iterations should continue this trend, especially with the razr getting people to take a second look at the Motorola brand.
- The new Motorola razr is a design beauty that falls short of expectations in terms of specs, and now possibly, in terms of build quality. While we still expect to see the razr sell well in the initial debut months, the looks will not be enough for future success if Motorola loses consumers’ faith in the durability of the phone.