Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei punishes its two staffs after an iPhone was used to send a Happy New Year greeting from its official Twitter account.
On New Year’s Day Huawei’s official Twitter handle wished followers a “Happy #2019” in a tweet marked sent “via Twitter for iPhone”. Although, the tweet was immediately deleted from Twitter handle, the screenshots of the tweet went viral across social media. This tweet was spotted by Twitter-police and popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee, the tweet came from Huawei had “via Twitter for iPhone” signature mentioned below.
A report by Reuters claim that Huawei corporate senior-vice president Chen Lifang statef the mistake had “caused damage to the Huawei brand”.
The company said in a memo that the mistake occurred when an outsourced social media handler Sapient experienced “VPN problems” in his desktop, wherein he used an iPhone with a roaming SIM card to send the message on time in the midnight.
As more than 10,000 domain names are blocked in China under the country’s Internet censorship policy, anyone in the China like to use these blocked domains would need to use a VPN connection. This domains include popular social media sites including Facebook and Twitter.
As a result of this iPhone tweet blunder, the rank of the Huawei staffs will be downgraded by 1 level and the company reduced their monthly salaries by 5,000 yuan (approx. Rs. 50,851.45).
Interestingly, employees and brand ambassadors of both Samsung and Huawei have often been caught using iPhones. Recently, Samsung Mobile Nigeria’s Twitter handle caught tweeting with an Apple iPhone. Apple Music Twitter handle caught using Android device to tweet. Back in 2017, Marques Brownlee highlighted that Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma promoting Google’s Pixel 2XL on Twitter using an iPhone.
In September last year, Huawei surpassed Apple’s global smartphone sales. Though, Apple still remains the most innovative brand as the average cost of the iPhone still beats those of Samsung and Huawei in addition to other OEMs.
