Attention is being paid to whether South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics will accept an internship proposal by the co-founder of Chinese handset maker OnePlus.

Carl Pei, the co-founder of the Chinese smartphone maker, caused a stir when he wrote in one of his blog posts Wednesday that he wanted to work as an intern for Samsung.

“Seriously. I would be honored to learn from your team (Samsung) about how you’ve been able to scale, run and manage your business so successfully,” said the CEO in the post.

He went on to say: “Better yet, let’s do an intern swap. I would be honored to visit your headquarters and, in turn, we would be happy to host one of your own executives here to show you how we work at OnePlus.”

Some market watchers speculated what seems to be a blunt, bold suggestion is another gimmick to create a media fuss about the two-year-old Chinese firm by exploiting the reputation of Samsung.

OnePlus debuted its first budget smartphone OnePlus One, often called as a Xiaomi killer, last year, deploying a unique invite-only subscription system, which allows only those who received invitations from their acquaintances to purchase the handset.

The Chinese firm, however, countered harsh criticism that the hardware and its operating system were far from satisfactory.

Refusing to give a comment on the internship proposal, a Samsung public relations staffer just said “usually, everyone -- whether they are CEOs, corporate executives or some celebrities -- should go through the proper application processes to intern at Samsung.”

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)