Computex 2020 Cancelled; Coming Back In 2021
by Ryan Smith on June 12, 2020 8:00 AM EST
After a protracted battle with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, this year’s Computex trade show has finally succumbed to the pathogen.
One of the world’s largest IT trade shows – and frequently a venue for major PC-related announcements – Computex 2020 was scheduled to take place last week. However due to the coronavirus and all of the health and travel restrictions born from it, back in March the show was delayed and rescheduled for late September. But as it turns out, even a 3 month delay won’t be quite enough to make the show work, and as a result event organizer TAITRA has given up on plans to host the trade show this year.
Calling the latest change in plans a “rescheduling” of Computex, the show has been officially moved to June 1st through the 5th of 2021. Which means that although the show overall has not been canceled and that there will be another Computex next year, for all practical purposes the 2020 show has been cancelled.
In the brief announcement, TAITRA cited the ongoing travel restrictions as being the primary reason for cancelling the 2020 show. Taiwan is still largely banning foreign nationals from entering the country, which if still in place in September, would pose an obvious issue to attending the trade show. At the same time, the original plan to reschedule the show to September was always a bit of a dicey proposition, as the delay put the show out of sync with annual product release cycles and fewer companies were planning to attend, leading to TAITRA scaling down the show accordingly.
Notably, this makes 2020 the first year that Computex has been cancelled entirely. Even in the SARS outbreak of 2003, the show was successfully moved to September. Which goes to show how much more serious and disruptive SARS-CoV-2 has turned out to be.
Source: TAITRA
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PeachNCream - Friday, June 12, 2020 - link
I doubt anyone rational would be willing to go to Computex anyway. Even though the risks are generally low, there is still a potential loss of life involved with getting infected (or infecting someone else) and that makes pretty much anything like a trade show or other major public gathering not worth the consequences.shikibyakko - Friday, June 12, 2020 - link
Yeah, because living in fear of death all the time to the point that you avoid everything normal is what makes life worth living.Peskarik - Saturday, June 13, 2020 - link
Absolutely. Psyops succeeded really well! The slow desintegration of western societies can now be blamed on "covid", like "due to covid crisis...." and so on. Brilliant work! I live outside US, in a place where there is almost now covid anymore, and I see loads of people wearing masks on the empty streets, wearing masks in their own cars...brainwashing works.PeachNCream - Saturday, June 13, 2020 - link
Put down the vodka bottle comrade.Peskarik - Saturday, June 13, 2020 - link
I don't drink...comradetwtech - Thursday, June 18, 2020 - link
He's right. What is being done here doesn't make any sense, especially because these measures - based on the data - appear to have been largely ineffective.Most of the news however has become completely disconnected from the data, so every day we see more stories reporting the idea of some great surge in the spread of the virus, but when you look for that surge on the charts, it's simply not there.
bananaforscale - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link
You're an idiot and have no clue how to manage a pandemic. Being careful may spare us from a second wave.close - Saturday, June 13, 2020 - link
@shikibyakko, risking other people's lives is what makes life worth living? I mean yours is do do whatever you want with it, go lick a handrail in the subway if that gets you going, play Russian roulette, climb skyscrapers. But most other people don't really feel comfortable in such environments knowing the risk of getting a disease and perhaps worse, taking it home to their family and friends.Now the organizers, being smarter than the average "courageous Joe on the comment section" realized this and saw no point in organizing an event with a pitiful attendance and that could only make matters worse for everybody. Getting to see live some gadgets that you can very well read about on the internet is unlikely to be worth even if just one person risking death.
BenSkywalker - Sunday, June 14, 2020 - link
You drive a car? Your brake lines could rupture and you plow into a group of people. Did you wear a mask before corona? Up to 650,000 people *per year* die from influenza related causes. I could keep going for pages, point being outside of hotspots the "danger" of corona isn't extraordinary in any meaningful way. Yes, if you live in an area with a major outbreak having some precautions makes sense, but living in constant fear when one person has a case within fifty miles is just bizarre.PeachNCream - Monday, June 15, 2020 - link
Think a little bit. One person within fifty miles - of course. Thousands of people at Computex from all over the world stuffed into the same enclosed space is a different animal.