Samsung made a technology faux pas on Wednesday when it issued a promotional tweet for an iPhone, the main device made by an archrival in the smartphone market.
South Korean tech giant posted a teaser of your next Unpacked hardware event for a Twitter account managed by the American division of Samsung Mobile.
“With #SamsungUnpacked approaching, we are working hard to bring you some exciting news. What field of innovation and advancement do you expect to see us reveal? Samsung asks in the tweet.
An innocuous message, it was the mode of delivery of the tweet that caused a certain stir online. Who posted the short message on the Samsung account used an iPhone, an almost unforgivable offense in the eyes of diehard fans.
Brand ambassadors for a number of major smartphone makers have been caught advertising iPhone products and services on several occasions, but company employee slips are a rarity. In 2013, for example, tennis star David Ferrer used his iPhone to send a complimentary tweet about his Galaxy S4. That same year, former T-Mobile CEO John Legere praised the Galaxy Note 3, but did so from the iPhone.
More recently, Ksenia Sobchak, who was paid to endorse Samsung products, was reportedly sued by the company in 2018 for using an iPhone X in public.
Samsung is expected to launch new Galaxy S21 models at the Unpacked event on January 14. State-of-the-art smartphones are expected to include 6.7-inch and 6.8-inch OLED screens, support for S-Pen, SoC Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 or Exynos 2100 from Samsung SoCs and other premium components in an attempt to compete with the iPhone 12 series from Apple.