T-Mobile US CEO Mike Sievert has withdrawn from the Consumer Electronics Show in January, where he was expected to give a keynote address. T-Mobile said it would limit its presence at the event due to concerns about the spread of Covid-19.
"While we are confident that CES organizers are taking exhaustive measures to protect in-person attendees and we had many preventative practices in place as well, we are prioritizing the safety of our team and other attendees with this decision," T-Mobile said in a statement. The mobile operator will continue to serve as a CES sponsor, but "the vast majority of our team will not be traveling to Las Vegas", it said.
The annual trade show runs 5-8 January 2022, with several press events in the days prior, such as Samsung's showcase on 04 January. The event was entirely virtual in 2021, but is this year going ahead with a full exhibition and in-person events. The Consumer Technology Agency said over 2,100 exhibitors were signed up. All participants must be vaccinated for Covid-19 and have a negative test within 24 hours of attending.
According to The Verge, Meta, Twitter, Pinteres, and iHeartRadio also announced in the past week that they won’t attend CES, nor will media outlets such as The Verge, Cnet, Engadget, TechCrunch, TechRadar and Tom’s Guide. Amazon also said it would not attend in person, due to uncertainty about the omicron variant of the virus.
Bloomberg reports that AMD and Samsung are still planning a limited presence, Nvidia will have a virtual-only keynote, and that Qualcomm, OnePlus and HTC still plan to attend. Sony, Samsung and Google said they were still "monitoring local conditions".
