Breaking the slew of cancellations of tech-related events of 2020 due to the fear of Coronavirus pandemic, Apple has decided not to cancel its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June but the company is changing the format. As per the statement released on Friday, Apple will hold WWDC 2020 entirely online.

“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,” he added.

The announcement comes weeks after several top tech giants decided to either cancel or postpone their conferences in the wake of the growing coronavirus threat.

The online event will be an opportunity for millions of 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, the company said in a statement.

“With all of the new products and technologies we’ve been working on, WWDC 2020 is going to be big,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.

The WWDC 2020 programme will provide Apple’s entire global developer community, which now includes more than 23 million registered developers in more than 155 countries and regions and the next generation of app developers with the insights and tools needed to turn their ideas into a reality.

Apple also announced it will commit $1 million to local San Jose organisations to offset associated revenue loss as a result of WWDC 2020’s new online format.

Developers have earned over $155 billion since the App Store launched in 2008.

With an active installed base of more than 1.5 billion Apple devices, WWDC 2020 will allow developers to learn about the new technologies and frameworks they rely on as they create new app experiences in areas including augmented reality, machine learning, health and fitness, home automation and more.

(With input from agencies)