Samsung paid 500 fake fans to attend Chinese press event for the launch of its new flagship phones

Report: Samsung paid 500 fake fans to attend Chinese press event for the launch of its new flagship phones

According to a report out of Shanghai, Samsung paid 500 people to pretend to be Samsung fans at a press conference held Friday in China to show off the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 edge. The 500 fake fans represented half of the 1000 who attended the event. According to someone who recruited "fans" for the manufacturer,

Samsung was seeking people under 30 who looked like students. They were each paid the equivalent of $4.80 USD once they stuck it out at the event for at least an hour. The recruiters received the equivalent of $3.20 USD for each person they got to attend.

The phoney fans were told to tell the press that they attended the event because they were Samsung fans or because they were interested in Sammy's new phones. Yet, half of the people at the event were taking pictures of the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge with an Apple iPhone. One attendee said that she answered an ad on WeChat, an IM app in China. She earned the equivalent of $8.14 USD for staying more than 15 minutes at the media event. Every hired person had to post their picture, name and phone number on WeChat. They also had to "like" the Samsung Galaxy Baidu page.

Samsung might feel pressured to rebuild its market share in the country. The iPhone earned a market share of 27.6% in China between December and February, according to Kantar Worldpanel. The most popular phones in China during that time period were the Apple iPhone 6 (with a 10.2% market share) followed by the Xiaomi Redmi and the Apple iPhone 6 Plus.

How many of the iphone flippers in line on release day at the apple stores are paid by someone else to be there?

They weren't paid by Apple, and Apple did everything it could to stop buying for the gray market export. . . Such as requiring that sales could only be made when associated with a contract. No contract less sales for the first two months.

This story is false. Samsung denies the payouts and The original source has retracted the story. See here Samsung denies paying people to attend galaxy s6 launch event

Thanks for the follow up. This was quite believable because Samsung has done such things in the past and practices Astroturfing. I'm glad it didn't happen.

Apple did the same thing since their phones are made in China as well.

When is Apple going to take that hundreds of billion of dollars in profits and start hiring Americans to make their phones instead of using cheap slave labor in China?

Oh, and when will Apple start paying American taxes on all those profits instead of creating foreign shall corporations to hide the money overseas?

Lying again, Code Toad. Apple has never had to pay anyone to show up for events. If you want to claim differently, provide evidence.

I have shown numerous time there is no slave labor when the workers on Apple's products are being paid the equivalent of $52 per hour in the USA, when compared to the base minimum wages in the respective economies and costs of living. When the workers queue up by thousands for each opening on the Apple assembly lines it demonstrates those positions are completely voluntary.

As for your complaint about taxes you are lying even more. Apple is paying every penny in taxes they're required by law to pay in every country where they earned the money. They move their over-seas AFTER TAX profits to the country which has the lowest capital gains tax rate in the world which is Ireland where they invest them in short term debentures. As for the U.S. Taxes, Apple pays more income taxes than any other corporation in the U.S., paying one dollar of every forty dollars of corporate income taxes the IRS collects. Apple's world wide tax rate was 29% with the USA contributing the highest portion of that. Sorry, if you want Apple to pay more, join the Democrats and change the U.S. tax laws to make them even more onerous!

In the meantime STOP LYING!

I’m not saying that Apple paid them. Nike doesn’t pay the shoe flippers either. Those in line often could not afford to buy the product themselves, even if it’s purchased on credit for quick turnaround.

But the press loves to show the photos of the “eager buyers” in line without bothering to report on why some of them are there.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.