HP Inc. is postponing its annual partner conference, Reinvent, in response to the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19.
Reinvent 2020 had been scheduled to take place from March 24-26 in Anaheim, Calif.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP notified media and analyst attendees in an email Thursday. Reinvent 2020 is now expected to take place in the early fall, the company said.
The email cites the “well-being of our employees, our partners, and our media and industry analyst community as our number one priority.”
Other tech events that have been canceled in response to the COVID-19 outbreak include Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month and Facebook’s F8 developer conference in May. The RSA Conference 2020 went ahead this week in San Francisco despite cancellations from companies including IBM and Verizon.
The postponing of the HP conference also comes during a week when global stock markets have plunged in response to the deadly outbreak, and companies including HP, Microsoft and Apple have cut their financial outlooks in response to the epidemic.
HP had described Reinvent as a “World Partner Forum,” and the Reinvent conference had attracted hundreds of partner attendees in past years. The company typically times the conference with major product announcements and the event has featured keynotes from many top HP executives.
“Today we made the difficult decision to postpone HP Reinvent in Anaheim, Mar 24-26 until the early fall timeframe in 2020. According to the World Health Organization, the dynamics of the Coronavirus continues to escalate, rather than subside, with wide-spread implications in multiple countries and markets,” HP said in the email to media and analysts. “We must place the well-being of our employees, our partners, and our media and industry analyst community as our number one priority.”
The cancellation also comes as HP is in the midst of battling a hostile takeover bid from rival Xerox, which has threatened to make a tender offer for all HP shares starting on or around March 2.
In other coronavirus-related cancellations, Microsoft announced Thursday it is withdrawing from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in mid-March, joining companies including Facebook and Sony in doing so.
