- WWDC is one of Apple’s biggest events each year, an opportunity for the iPhone maker to showcase updated software for its phones and other devices – and to impress us all with a keynote address.
- However, the coronavirus has frightened the Santa Clara County government enough to encourage companies to minimize major events or eliminate them entirely.
- Apple is based in Cupertino, Santa Clara County. It remains to be seen whether the company will take this advice to heart and allow it to influence the schedule of this year’s annual developer conference.
- Visit the BGR home page for more stories.
As the week drew to a close, new confirmed cases of coronaviruses continued to be identified in the United States, as the virus (and its reaction) still dominates much of daily life here and around the world. As of this writing, for example, the death toll in the United States from the virus has risen to 14, with more than 225 confirmed cases in the country, the first of which has just been announced in Pennsylvania. Worldwide, Johns Hopkins University estimates that more than 100,000 have been infected. On Friday morning, President Trump also signed an $ 8.3 billion emergency spending bill to fight the virus.
Aside from its direct health effects, meanwhile, it also continues to cast a disturbing shadow over the US economy, with companies canceling trips, meetings, in-person interviews and much more. In this sense, the California county government, which includes Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino (Santa Clara county), has just published new directives intended to encourage companies to keep large meetings and events to a minimum – or even to cancel them altogether.
The guidelines were reported by The edge, and they’re aimed at a county where other tech giants like Google also have their headquarters. Guidelines state that large face-to-face conferences should be avoided, and companies are also encouraged to suspend the travel of non-essential employees, make more use of telework options, and try to prevent employees from working at a distance from each other. other.
The guidelines do not include a date or deadline for their planned implementation, so this need not be seen as a short-term solution. Where Apple comes in is that now that companies like Google and Facebook have organized some of their big conferences for the year, everyone is waiting to see if the iPhone maker will follow – in fact , whether or not to go ahead with WWDC 2020.
The annual developer conference is one of Apple’s biggest events of the year, which always includes a main presentation and the unveiling of updated software for its myriad of devices. Apple generally announces WWDC dates as early as this month, before hosting the event itself in June.
If Apple decides to make the event online only this year, it will follow other major steps the company has taken in response to the virus, such as the temporary closure of all Apple stores in China in January. Apple has also said in recent weeks that the effects of the virus on businesses, such as closed stores and reduced numbers of people buying smartphones, will cause the company to meet the revenue targets it had projected for the quarter In progress.