A Chinese newspaper reported last week that Samsung recruited and paid a bunch of "temporary employees" to attend a Chinese press event announcing some new devices.
The publication is Shanghai-based The Paper, whose story said that Samsung paid somewhere between 400 and 500 "fanboys" 30 to 50 yuan (roughly $5 to $8) to attend the event two Fridays ago.
Now Samsung says it has investigated the claim and is calling BS. From the Samsung Tomorrow blog:
"Samsung investigated a media report on April 3 that claimed people were temporarily hired and paid to attend the Galaxy S6 launching event in Shanghai, China and later found that the story was totally groundless and bogus."
And there's more: "In the wake of the investigation, the media outlet that broke the story corroborated our findings and soon retracted the erroneous story."
Samsung also claims that it is asking The Paper to go further than just removing the story and write a correction.
The Android Police blog notes that it has seen a lot of Samsung employees at other press events, like the gigantic event it held in Barcelona during Mobile World Congress.
I was there. And there were a lot of Samsung people there. I remember wondering how it could be possible that so many wanted to attend. I know that Samsung is the biggest tech company in the world, but there were thousands and thousands of people jammed into the biggest press event venue I've ever seen.
And the Samsung event at CES in Las Vegas, while smaller, is very hard to get into -- especially if you don't have a press pass.
Could it be that Samsung is intentionally overinflating these events to pump up the hype?