Chinese technology brand Huawei has punished 2 employees for New Year greetings posted on its official Twitter account using an iPhone.
While Huawei quickly deleted the tweet in question, screenshots went viral – as is happens often with the cases when Android manufacturers are caught tweeting from iPhone. Now, the company’s vice president Chen Lifang slammed the employees responsible for the tweet, saying “the incident caused damage to the Huawei brand.”
Twitter is blocked in China as the Internet is heavily censored. So, to gain access, social media managers had to use a virtual private network (VPN) connection.
The memo statements read that an outsourced social media manager experienced problems with their desktop computer, so they turned to a nearby iPhone to send the tweet:
The mistake occurred when outsourced social media handler Sapient experienced “VPN problems” with a desktop computer so used an iPhone with a roaming SIM card in order to send the message on time at midnight,
Huawei said in the memo.
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Huawei has demoted those employees and reduced their monthly salaries by over $700 (5,000 yuan). Also, The pay rank of one of the employees — Huawei’s digital marketing director will also be frozen for 12 months.
It is not the first time use of the Apple product has created controversy for Huawei. Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of nationalistic tabloid Global Times, was trolled online after he used his an iPhone for Huawei and ZTE Corp. He later explained that his actions were not hypocritical as foreign brands should not be discriminated against.
