Xiaomi has come under fire from the Chinese government for supposedly violating the country’s new advertising law, which bans the adoption of superlative adjectives to sell products. The brand is the first internet enterprise to be investigated under the legislation.
The act came into effect on September 1. It’s intended to protect people from ads which exaggerate product features by using phrases such as ‘the best’ or ‘the most advanced’. Regulators from the Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce will now examine if Xiaomi has been marketing its devices with such descriptions.
As per the PTI report, the law-enforcement officers started the inquiry after receiving a tip from a whistleblower. They discovered evidence of suspicious behavior on the official Xiaomi website. The company has not made an official comment on the matter yet. According to Zhu Dalin, an analyst at internet consultancy firm Analysys International, using superlative expressions to promote products is very common.
He thinks the new law will affect other online-based companies to a certain extent. Dalin believes consumers have become so used to cliche terms like ‘the super phone’ or ‘the omnipotent TV’, the phrases do not have any kind of major impact on them now. The new controversy is not the first instance of Xiaomi getting implicated in an advertising row.
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Back in August this year, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 was being sold on e-commerce sites as a handset which had panels from Sharp Corp, a Japanese company, and AU Optronics Corp, a Taiwanese manufacturer. Customers later found out that the smartphone’s screens were actually produced by Tianma Microelectronics Co Ltd.
Xiaomi responded to the allegations by claiming the incorrect information was the result of an employee error. It further said the false data never apperead on its own website or at the launch event for the phone.