Not too surprisingly the news today is dominated by the Coronavirus pandemic and its impact on both China and world trade in the tech industries.

The Coronavirus outbreak will severely affect China’s smart devices market including smartphone and PC shipments, according to analyst firm Canalys which says it has dramatically revised previous forecasts of a 7% decline in smartphone shipments to a 40% to-50% drop for smartphones and 20% for PCs - with the proviso that the situation recovers to pre-outbreak levels by the end of February.

Visitors from China’s Hubei province will not be able to attend the GSMA MWC Barcelona event to be held in Barcelona later this month due to restrictions on access now imposed by the GSMA due to concerns over the spread of the Coronavirus.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group has launched a global B2B sourcing platform which it says will allow countries such as Australia to connect medical-goods suppliers of all sizes with frontline medical personnel who are working towards slowing the spread of novel coronavirus in China.

A survey of 22,000 motorists in Victoria, carried out in late 2019, has found that more of them prefer hybrid power for their next car, rather than a petrol engine, while the preference for all-electric vehicles is also growing.

Scammers are using new online platforms to take advantage of their victims, with dating and romance scams making up one fifth of losses amounting to millions of dollars, across all scams reported to the ACCC’s Scamwatch service in 2019.

And of course, there's plenty more so for all the news visit www.itwire.com.

Have a great day!

Stan Beer, Editor in Chief, iTWire

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