Samsung has ended an online campaign in Taiwan amid a local regulator's probe into whether the company broke the law by paying for positive reviews of its products and negative comments about rivals.
Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) is gathering information after receiving emails earlier this month alleging posts to online forums were suspicious, said Sun Lih-Chyun, a commissioner at the regulator. Samsung said in a statement the situation was "unfortunate" and it ceased using anonymous comments in online marketing last year.
Samsung, which has overtaken Apple and Nokia to lead the $US294 billion smartphone market, last month unveiled its new Galaxy S4 handset at an event in New York's Radio City Music Hall. Taiwan-based HTC, which released its flagship HTC One last month, has lost market share amid competition and delays in shipments of own products.
"These are the two star products at least for the first half of this year," said Warren Lau, an analyst at Kim Eng Securities in Hong Kong. "So I would suspect that some sales marketing people will try their very best to market their products."
Posts to online forums are alleged to have included criticism of rival smartphones, including those made by HTC, and praise of Samsung's products, Sun said. HTC has been asked to provide information, while Samsung has yet to be contacted by the FTC, he said.
'Insufficient understanding'
Samsung, which announced its online communications credo in 2011, said it remains committed to engaging in transparent and honest communications with consumers.
The South Korean company's credo prohibits criticisms of competitors and their products and it voluntarily ceased using anonymous comments last year, it said in a statement.
The situation "occurred due to insufficient understanding of these fundamental principles" of transparent and honest communications with consumers, Samsung said.
The commissioners discussed whether the posts would breach one of the articles of fair trade regulations relating to false advertising, with penalties of as much as $TWD25 million ($A812,000) an incident, said the FTC's Sun.
A more serious breach of a separate article on defamation is also being investigated and could lead to criminal charges with imprisonment of as long as two years per case, Sun said. A defamation case would first require a victim to file a formal complaint, he said.
"We are disappointed that a competitor would resort to misleading consumers to discredit our innovation," HTC said in a statement.
Bloomberg
business already so good yet have to resort to such underhand tactics?
Samsung Taiwan apologies for the fake HTC One reviews in Taiwan. Samsung Taiwan hired students to post fake reviews about the HTC One and that is pretty bad. Maybe Samsung Taiwan is worried about their sales in Taiwan. Samsung didn’t say they hired persons but in the text below you can make this up. Let’s hope Samsung won`t do this anymore.
Even we must say the HTC One has pretty nice build quality.
Samsung Electronics remains committed to engaging in transparent and honest communications with consumers as outlined in the company’s Online Communications Credo. We have encouraged all Samsung Electronics employees worldwide to remain faithful to our Credo.
The recent incident was unfortunate, and occurred due to insufficient understanding of these fundamental principles.
Samsung Electronics Taiwan (SET) has ceased all marketing activities that involve the posting of anonymous comments, and will ensure that all SET online marketing activities will be fully compliant with the company’s Online Communications Credo.
We regret any inconvenience this incident may have caused. We will continue to reinforce education and training for our employees to prevent any future recurrence.