It turns out that Samsung might have hired 500 people to act as fans at the Galaxy S6 launch in China. According to reports, the Korean device maker paid around 500 people to attend its event, most of which were actually iPhone users.
Samsung didn't go out and find all of these people by itself though. According to Chinese site, The Paper (Via: WantChinaTimes), a person who specializes in recruiting people for these sort of jobs bought over 100 people to the event and paid them ¥20 each, which works out as little over £2.
The other recruiters involved with the event managed to round-up a further 400 people to attend. Only one thousand people were invited to the event, so these fake fans accounted for half of the total attendance. One woman was reportedly hired by Samsung directly and was paid ¥50 or just over a fiver here in the UK, she was only required to stay at the event for 15 minutes or so.
According to The Paper's sources, Samsung instructed everyone involved to tell reporters at the event that they were interested in checking out Samsung's brand new flagship devices. They were also given instructions for promoting the event via social media, although Samsung did not tell anyone to leave their iPhones at home, so most pictures taken there were on an Apple device.
Samsung has yet to comment on the report coming straight from China. However, it does show that the company is desperate to regain traction in China, following the launch of the iPhone in the country last year.
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KitGuru Says: This isn't the first time Samsung has done something like this, at one point, the company faked online comments bashing HTC following the successful launch of the HTC One.
Samsung’s probably a company that will do any means just for their company. Just from observing how they counter-sued nVidia for technology patent and even going as far to (rumored) buy AMD, I can know Samsung bites back pretty hard, perhaps harder. Wells, though I find Samsung hiring 500 pseudo fans disturbing, I’m probably gonna get the S6 anyways
Sony for life 😀
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p][- . true that Patricia `s report is impossible… on wednesday I bought Saab 99 Turbo since I been making $8569 thiss month and also ten/k this past month
. it’s actualy my favourite-work I’ve had . I began this three months/ago and pretty much straight away was earning more than $75… p/h . you could try here HERE’S MORE DETAIL