Samsung fined $340,000 for badmouthing HTC in Taiwan

You can’t run a smear campaign against a competitor in its home country and expect to get away with it, and while Samsung tried, the Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission is having none of it and has fined the Taiwanese manufacturer with a whopping $340,000, for running an internet campaign in which Samsung took to defaming HTC’s products while praising its own by hiring college students.

This isn’t the first time Samsung is at the receiving end of a fine in the country – an earlier fine saw them pay $10,034 for false advertising of the camera on the Galaxy Y Duos. It’s not like Samsung needs to defame HTC when its own products sell like hot cakes through the company’s intense advertising campaigns and word-of-mouth marketing, but since they did, well, it’s not surprising that the Taiwanese government stepped in.