HMD Global, the maker of Nokia-branded smartphones, on Wednesday announced it was withdrawing from the Mobile World Congress (MWC) due to the outbreak of coronavirus (2019-nCoV).

"HMD Global has been carefully monitoring the situation following the outbreak of Covid-19. After much deliberation, we have decided to cancel our participation at MWC Barcelona, 2020," the company said in a statement.

"We believe the prudent decision is to cancel our participation at MWC and want to express our sincere thanks to the GSMA and other authorities for their tireless efforts to address the challenges resulting from Covid-19, and they have our full support as they move forward," the company added.

Meanwhile, MWC organiser and telecoms lobby GSMA is going to hold a meeting on Friday to decide on the fate of the world's biggest tech event.

According to a new report coming out of Spain, GSMA is holding a meeting on Friday, February 14, to decide the fate of MWC 2020, GSMArena reported on Tuesday.

Cisco and Facebook have become the latest big tech firms to drop out of the world's largest mobile industry exhibition.

Both the companies have joined the growing list of companies — including LG electronics, Ericsson, Nvidia, Sony, Amazon, Intel, Vivo, and NTT Docomo to not attend the mobile trade show.

Chinese health authorities on Wednesday said it received reports of 2,015 new confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection and 97 deaths from 31 provincial-level regions and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.

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With this, the overall confirmed cases on the Chinese mainland has reached 44,653 by the end of Tuesday, and 1,113 people died of the disease. (IANS)