A looming new Chinese smartphone competitor has begun its marketing campaign with a bang, according to an article by James Vincent on The Verge. The CEO of major China-based internet video site LeTV, Jia Yueting, posted an image to his Weibo page depicting Apple as Hitler.
On one half of the image stand five young-looking cartoon characters, while on the other half looms a likeness of Adolf Hitler wearing an armband with the Apple logo on it. Text underneath says “Crowdsourced, freedom vs arrogance, tyranny” in an apparent criticism of the infamously closed architecture of the Apple ecosystem, which strictly controls which software and hardware are compatible with its devices.
Jia elaborates, “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?'” And, according to Vincent, an image of a smartphone in the background of the picture resembles leaked photos of the forthcoming LeTV X900 smartphone, which, incidentally, looks a lot like an iPhone.
While comparing any person or company to Hitler is generally a bad idea, Jia does have a point with respect to Apple’s lack of openness. The company’s approach has faced criticism from a number of competitors and consumers, but it has also allowed the company to exercise certain standards with its products and services, as in the case of its pioneering efforts with its Touch ID security system, which was unorthodox at its unveiling but has now set a standard. Meanwhile, openness has proven to be a liability in some cases, preventing companies like Google from enforcing the security standards perceived to be necessary for an mPayment platform.
Those concerns aside, at the very least Jia’s bombast has been getting him some publicity, which is probably all he really wanted anyway.
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