Vodafone New Zealand’s Xperia Play Theft A Hoax

Not too long ago we posted news about how Vodafone New Zealand’s shipment of Xperia Play got stolen and how we thought that maybe it could be just a marketing gimmick in an attempt to make it go viral?

Turns out we were right about that as Vodafone New Zealand has recently admitted that it made up the claim that their shipment of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play was stolen.

Vodafone New Zealand spokesman Matthew East told The Australian this morning the company had made up the claim on Twitter for marketing purposes. While perhaps not the best marketing gimmick one can only imagine the kind of backlash they will be experiencing from worried customers who might have already paid for pre-orders. In terms of marketing though it did put them on the map and created quite a buzz with regards to the Xperia Play.

The question now is do you think that this could affect the sales of the Xperia Play? Are their customers going to be angry enough to decide to drop the carrier in favor of another one?