An internal memo showed that China’s Huawei Technology punished two employees for the New Year Greetings they sent on the company’s official Twitter account by means of an iPhone.
This information was first spread by Reuters. Huawei is in a stiff competition with Apple and that can be clearly seen from Huawei’s P-series smartphones at loggerheads for market sales with Apple’s iPhone.
On New Year’s Day, the Huawei Twitter account wished followers a “Happy2019” and the Twitter account marked the tweet as sent “via Twitter for iPhone.” That tweet was immediately removed but screenshots of the blunder spread across social media.
A comment on Weibo, a microblog for all things tech said “The traitor has revealed himself.” That comment was posted by a Weibo user and it was liked for over 600 times. That was some time after that tweet was made on Huawei’s Twitter account.
Later, an internal Huawei memo seen by Reuters revealed that two top workers at Huawei confirmed that “the incident caused damage to the company brand.” According to information gleaned from the firm’s memo, the mistake occurred when outsourced social media handler Sapient experienced VPN problems with a desktop computer, so a phone was used and that turned out to be an iPhone with a roaming SIM card. The message was sent at around midnight.
Twitter is blocked in China, as much as Facebook Inc, and Alphabet Inc are blocked in China. This is due to the fact that the internet is heavily censored in that country. To gain access, users need a virtual private network (VPN) connection.
At the moment, the Chinese firm has overtaken Apple as the world’s second-largest smartphone seller in the year 2018.
Both Huawei and Sapient did not immediately respond to comment after the incident. Huawei only sent out a memo which attributed the issue to “procedural incompliance and management oversight.
Also, the two employees who committed the blunder have been demoted as the memo confirmed. They had their rank reduced and monthly salary reduced by 5,000 yuan.
