Industry

Huawei Punishes Employees Responsible for iPhone Tweet Blunder

Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei published a notice from the public and government affairs department in response to its tweet blunder.

On Dec. 31, Huawei sent a New Years greeting from the company’s official Twitter account marked sent “via Twitter for iPhone”. Although the post was quickly removed seconds after posting, it still caught the attention of American YouTuber Marques Brownlee.

“That was fast,” said Brownlee through Twitter with a screenshot of the Huawei tweet.

Huawei announced through an internal notice that it will be punishing the employees responsible for the mistake.

According to the notice, two employees, including the head of the company’s digital marketing team, will be demoted by one rank and have their monthly salaries cut by 5000 yuan each.

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In addition, the head of digital marketing won’t receive an annual performance assessment higher than a B, and will have his promotion and salary increment frozen for 12 months.

Huawei also said in the memo that the mistake occurred because its social media handler experienced virtual private network (VPN) problems on its desktop computer and had to resort to using an iPhone with a Hong Kong SIM card inserted to send the tweet on time for the countdown.

Twitter and many foreign social media services is blocked in China. Thus, users must use a VPN to gain access to them. It has also been spotted that Huawei Malaysia made the same New Years celebration message with a “via Twitter for iPhone” tag showing in the corner.

This was not the first time Apple’s competitors has been caught sending official messages using an iPhone. Brownlee had also caught Samsung Nigeria tweeting a promotion for the Galaxy Note 9 from an iPhone before.


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