Apple announces WWDC will be held in June as an online only event

Apple has become the latest company to cancel an upcoming event over the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic, announcing the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be held online only this year.

The digital event will feature a ‘completely new online experience’ says Apple, and though there’s no exact dates announced for WWDC yet, the statement does say it will be held in June.

In a statement Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said ‘The current health situation has required that we create a new WWDC 2020 format that delivers a full program with an online keynote and sessions, offering a great learning experience for our entire developer community, all around the world’.

The event is likely to kickoff with the usual keynote event, where Apple is expected to announce new features for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS, before individual deep dive sessions which would also be streamed live.

This online only event mimics Google, Microsoft and Facebook who all recently cancelled the on-site portion of their developer conferences, choosing to go virtual for their developer sessions. Google has always maintained a steady stream of developer sessions through YouTube, so it’s expected that Apple and Facebook would find similar alternatives.