The company’s CEO made a post on Weibo — China’s Twitter — asking fans to buy more books and read them. The post itself was nothing that would stir controversy, but it was done so from an iPhone.

Pan Jiutang, a partner of the Xiaomi Industry Investment Department, did come forward in Lei Jun’s defense and claimed that executives do use smartphones from other brands to assess the competition and anyone claiming not to do so is either hypocritical or incompetent.

While this can certainly be the case here, it is quite embarrassing for Xiaomi’s CEO to be caught using an iPhone like this. I guess the company’s CEO was using an iPhone to assess why it sells so well despite some Android smartphones launching with better cameras and offering more value for money.

Xiaomi is known to copy the design of Apple products and even launch similar services in China.

This is not the first time that a major smartphone company CEO or a celebrity has been caught using an iPhone despite being paid to advertise an Android device. Some companies have actually banned their employees from using an iPhone. In fact, Huawei’s CEO family tends to prefer Apple products over that of the company.

To Apple’s credit, the person handling the Apple Music account had also once tweeted from an Android device.