Amid border tensions with China and a growing chorus for boycotting Chinese goods, top Indian executives of some of the most popular phone brands like Xiaomi and Realme have found themselves in hot water every time they tweet to promote their upcoming or existing products.
Sensing the consumers' mood, social media teams at some Chinese smartphone brands have decided to adopt a more cautionary approach on promoting their products for the time being, internal sources told .
A tweet on Friday by Xiaomi India Managing Director Manu Kumar Jain that announced the next sale date for its newly-launched Mi Notebooks was trolled.
While many users wrote "boycott Chinese goods" in the comment section, one user even advised Jain to keep quiet for some time in order to avoid drawing unwanted attention as the situation is not good.
However, in less than a couple of hours of the tweet, the tweet garnered nearly more than 625 likes and 77 retweets.
Jain has over 374,000 followers on Twitter. His tweet on June 17 which was related to the sale of Mi Notebooks garnered nearly 2,000 likes and 470 retweets.
Realme India CEO Madhav Sheth who is also very active on social media, had to deal with a similar response on Thursday as several Twitter users called for boycotting Chinese goods when he tweeted about the upcoming launch of Realme X3 and Realme X3 SuperZoom smartphones in India on June 25.
"You are a Chinese brand. And after the current issue with Chinese troops I am not gonna buy any smartphone from Chinese brands like Realme Redmi Oppo Vivo. I will instead opt for Samsung no matter if I have to compromise with some extra features," Twitter user Akshat Shukla (@akshat_shukla22) wrote in the comment section.
Despite the anti-China sentiment, Sheth's tweet managed to garner over 1,700 likes and more than 100 retweets within a day. The Realme India CEO has over 223,000 followers on Twitter.
There were reports of OPPO cancelling the livestream to launch its 5G phone in India too in the current seriousAsituation. The company though blamed a technical glitch as the reason for not livestreaming the event.
The India smartphone market is dominated by Chinese players, but after 20 Indian soldiers were brutally killed by the China PLA late on Monday, it has put more pressure on these brands which are yet to recover fully from severe production loss due to shutdown of factories in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.
( With inputs from IANS )