FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is seen during
the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2018.
REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
Chinese telecom giant Huawei has punished two employees for posting a
New Year greeting on the company’s official Twitter account using an
iPhone made by arch rival Apple, an internal memo showed.
Huawei dislodged Apple last year from its position as the world’s
second biggest smartphone-seller, below global number one Samsung.
But
in a public relations gaffe, the Chinese company wished followers a
“Happy #2019” in a tweet on New Year’s Day — marked sent “via Twitter
for iPhone”.
Video producer Marques Brownlee shared a screenshot of the post with
his three million Twitter followers before Huawei deleted it and sent
another, this time marked “sent via Twitter Media Studio”.
One unnamed employee and Huawei’s director of digital marketing were
demoted and had their monthly salary slashed by 5,000 yuan ($730),
according to the memo widely shared on China’s Twitter-like platform
Weibo and seen by AFP.
As well as the pay cut, the digital marketing director was also hit
with a salary freeze and no promotions for the next 12 months.
Although the blunder was made by a third-party social media company
called Sapient, the pair were disciplined for the “negative impact” on
the Huawei brand caused by the incident, which highlighted ” procedural
incompliance and management oversight”, the memo said.
In the memo dated Thursday, Huawei’s corporate senior vice president
Chen Lifang said the gaffe took place when Sapient used an iPhone with a
Hong Kong SIM card to send the Twitter greeting after experiencing “VPN
problems”.
Twitter — and other major foreign sites like Facebook and Google —
are blocked in China and users need a virtual private network (VPN)
connection to circumvent Beijing’s internet controls.
Huawei did not reply to AFP’s request for a comment on the incident.
The company has come under fire in 2018, with Washington leading efforts to blacklist Huawei internationally.
The arrest of its chief financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada in
early December — on a US extradition request linked to
sanctions-breaking business dealings with Iran — has led to a surge of
patriotism in China with companies encouraging staff to buy Huawei
smartphones.
Several companies are offering employees subsidies for Huawei phone
purchases, while others have even warned staff against buying Apple
products, AFP found.
Huawei in December said it expects to see a 21 percent rise in
revenue for 2018 despite some of its telecommunications equipment being
banned in several countries due to security concerns.
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