Jia Yueting, the billionaire founder and CEO of Chinese internet video site Leshi TV (LeTV), is in the news for all the wrong reasons. In a poster posted to Yueting’s verified Weibo page teasing the launch of his new smartphone, the CEO has compared Apple to the Nazis.
As you can see here, the image depicts a cartoon Adolf Hitler wearing a red armband with the Apple logo in place of the Nazi swastika. The text across the top of the poster compares the attributes of the Android and iOS ecosystems — “Crowdsourced, freedom vs arrogance, tyranny” — while Yueting’s accompanying post argues that Apple’s approach to the smartphone industry is stifling innovation and harming the interests of users.
“Under the arrogant regime of iOS domination that developers around the world love yet hate, we are always carefully asking, ‘is this kind of innovation okay?'” writes Yueting. He goes on to say that Apple is a “dusk empire” — a metaphor for something which is dying — while the image depicts two contrasting paths for the industry. The outline of the phone in the background with open doors matches leaked images of LeTV’s upcoming LeTV X900 smartphone.
Users of Weibo, China’s answer to Facebook with more than 5.5 million fans were quick to point out the CEO on his buffoonery. Probably not the best way to get the message across that Android is more open than Apple’s iOS software. However, just like many other tasteless or ill-judged marketing campaigns, it has grabbed Leshi and Yueting some attention, even if none of it will be positive.
Whether Hitler will continue to feature in the firm’s marketing campaign in the future remains to be seen.
