DE-CIX, the operator of the world's largest Internet Exchange in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, is taking stock for the first time since the tightening of public measures in the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 virus. DE-CIX has noted a strong change in data traffic and also in Internet user behavior. The average data traffic at the world's largest Internet Exchange in Frankfurt has increased by 10% since last Wednesday. Compared to the previous few weeks, there has also been a significant increase in video conferencing traffic - such as Skype, Teams, and WebEx - of about 50%, and a rising number of VPN users has also been registered. In addition, since Friday last week there has also been an increase of about 25% in online and cloud gaming, and there has also been a significant increase in traffic from the use of social media platforms. Similar results are expected for the other DE-CIX locations.

"Capacities in our own network are regularly expanded on a long-term basis. We always plan for about twelve months in advance. We continue expanding as soon as 63% of the existing capacities are reached. The remaining 37% free capacity is needed to create redundancy and to ensure that we always have enough free capacity for traffic growth. In addition to our network for the Internet Exchange, customers also need to expand capacity in their own network. These expansions are carried out by the customers themselves, according to their own processes and procedures," comments Dr Thomas King, CTO at DE-CIX, on the increasing data traffic.

CD Projekt Red in a statement said that the extraordinary circumstances in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic will not affect the release date of "Cyberpunk 2077," arguably the most anticipated game of the year. The game is slated for 17 September, 2020 for Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia. All CDPR employees have been ordered to work from home until further notice. Much of the content creation of "Cyberpunk 2077" is ready and the game is in post-production, game testing, and receiving pre-release varnish. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many large companies to deploy remote- or virtual desktops for their employees to fall in line with social distancing policies that aim to slow down the spread of the NoCV infection.

Steam experienced its highest ever service load over the weekend, with over 20.3 million users concurrently logged in. Of these over 6.4 million were actively playing a game. Its previous service load record was a little over 19 million users, hit just last month (February 2020). This is particularly interesting because the week of 9th March didn't particularly have any big game releases, and according a report by The Verge, most of the 6.4 million gaming were hooked to old favorites, such as CS:GO (>1.02 million), PUBG (>700k), and Dota 2 (>500k).

This record could be just as temporary, with big releases such as "Doom Eternal" lined up for the upcoming weekend. A spike in online gaming and other forms of on-demand entertainment shouldn't surprise anyone in the middle of a global pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak has forced most governments quarantine large populations, forcing businesses to have their employees work from home. Steam remains the leading game digital distribution and DRM platform.

Apple today announced it will host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June. Now in its 31st year, WWDC 2020 will take on an entirely new online format packed with content for consumers, press and developers alike. The online event will be an opportunity for millions of creative and innovative developers to get early access to the future of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS, and engage with Apple engineers as they work to build app experiences that enrich the lives of Apple customers around the globe.

"We are delivering WWDC 2020 this June in an innovative way to millions of developers around the world, bringing the entire developer community together with a new experience," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "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. We will be sharing all of the details in the weeks ahead."

Huawei is planning a response to a recent administrative move by the U.S. Department of Commerce that makes it impossible for foreign companies such as Taiwan's TSMC to serve it. Huawei's mobile SoC design house subsidiary, HiSilicon, is highly dependant on TSMC to contract manufacture its SoCs on the company's 7 nm (N7), and various 10 nm-class FinFET nodes. Huawei is preparing to port some of its SoC designs to a 14 nm node of China's state-owned Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) as contingency. Without access to 7 nm, Huawei's plans to lead the global 5G infrastructure market would hit severe roadblocks. The U.S. move has triggered a heated (and somewhat loaded) reprisal from Global Times, a newspaper that's regarded in diplomatic circles as a platform for hawkish unofficial messaging by the Chinese government.

China could blackmail the U.S. into lifting its trade ban and a more recent supplier-access denial to Huawei, with potential shortages of essential medical supplies, particularly face masks. An eminent Chinese industrial analyst, Ma Jihua, told Chinese newspaper Global Times: "The Huawei problem has been elevated to one of national interests and Chinese firms may stop supplying much-needed face masks if the U.S. provokes [a fight with Huawei]." In addition to Chinese suppliers, American firms such as 3M manufacture face masks in China, besides several other consumables needed to fight epidemics, such as gloves, hazmat suits, goggles, etc.

NVIDIA today announced that their yearly GPU Technology Conference (GTC) will be held online, instead of locally at the San Jose Convention Center as previously planned. The company cites Covid-19 (colloquially called Coronavirus) concerns as the root cause - the health of both its professionals and attendees is paramount for the company, and as such, an online event seems more inline with the state of the world.

In the press note, NVIDIA also said that NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will still deliver a keynote address, which will be available exclusively by livestream. All those who registered for a GTC pass will receive a full refund. This is yet another event that has been impacted by the recent virus outbreak that has the world's economies teetering, but for the more cynical among us, it could be the beginning of a new way of doing this sorts of events: online, rather than locally, thus reducing the required investment and logistics usually associated with such.

Game Developers Conference is perhaps one of the biggest organizations in the gaming industry, covering everything from gaming hardware to games themselves. This year's GDC event was planned to happen on March 16th, however, due to the Coronavirus COVID-19 concerns, the GDC organization has decided to postpone the event. This doesn't mean that the conference will not happen at all. Instead, the GDC organizers plan to host the event sometime "later in the summer", when hopefully the COVID-19 concerns will settle. To add, Facebook also canceled its F8 Developer Conference, along with Open Compute Project (OCP) Global Summit which also got canceled due to virus outbreak fears.

Being that Computex is happening within three months, there are growing concerns that the event may not happen at all, however, we can hope that the situation will be resolved soon and that we can bring you live coverage of the event.

The following analysis shows TrendForce's investigations of key component and other downstream technology industries, under the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, with the latest data as of February 14, 2020.

Semiconductors
Compared to the OSAT industry, the foundry industry has a much higher degree of fab automation and thus is less impacted by the outbreak. But because most workers at semiconductor manufacturing sites in China come from out of town, labor shortages and traffic restrictions will lower work resumption rates at foundries more than expected. In the short term, fab utilization rates may not make a full recovery. As a result, given that the outbreak has not yet been effectively contained, TrendForce is projecting a possible decline in shipment for the Chinese foundry industry in 1Q20, in turn affecting downstream Chinese OSAT companies. The industry's overall performance recovery remains to be seen.