Xiaomi, Makers of Chinese iPhone Clone, Mock Steve Jobs’s Death on Weibo

While we knew Lei Jun was content to make tasteless comments about Steve Jobs’s death before he had died, somehow we thought Jobs’s actual passing might stop him. We were wrong.

Yesterday, the official Weibo account of Xiaomi — Lei Jun’s mobile phone company, which is making a very iPhone-like handset for the Chinese market — made a couple of tasteless tweets.

First, in response to a photo someone else had tweeted with a picture of Jobs’s face loaded onto an iPad at one of the country’s Apple stores in an impromptu tribute, Xiaomi tweeted:

Now people with iPads can load up that black and white headshot of Jobs to fullscreen and clasp it to their breasts.

Shortly after that, in response to another tweet about how the 4S in iPhone 4S now stands for “for Steve,” Xiaomi tweeted:

iDead

Classy, guys. Real classy. Needless to say (I hope) the company has since deleted the tweets and apologized, claiming that an employee working overtime manning the company’s Weibo account was responsible for the messages and would be dealt with harshly. Lei Jun posted a message saying he’d just returned to Beijing and was “shocked” to learn about the tweets.

Personally, given Lei Jun’s previous comments, I’m a bit suspicious of the claim that he was totally uninvolved in this, but regardless of who actually composed the messages and pressed the “Send” button, Xiaomi is Lei Jun’s company. He should take responsibility for these tweets.

Well, this looks familiar (source: Xiaomi BBS)

Moreover, while it would be tasteless for any company to mock the death of Jobs, it’s especially heartless for Xiaomi, given that they’re about to launch an iPhone clone that Lei Jun announced via a press conference that was patterned minute for minute on Jobs’s signature unveilings, right down to the blue jeans and black shirt. Perhaps Xiaomi is making jokes about Jobs’s passing because they’re happy they can now get away with stealing everything from Jobs’s handset designs to his personal style.

The Xiaomi has done extremely well in pre-orders, thanks in large part to its ridiculously low price, but the phone hasn’t even been released yet and there are already serious questions about its quality and manufacturing.