Huawei punished employees for tweeting New Year wishes from iPhone
What's the story
A few days back, Huawei sent New Year wishes, but by tweeting out from an iPhone. The error was grave considering Apple-Huawei rivalry, but not a first for the Chinese giant. And now, the company appears to be taking action by punishing the employees involved in the matter. Here's more on the issue.
Issue
Here's what happened on New Year
On the New Year's eve, Huawei wished its Twitter followers a "Happy #2019", just like everyone else. But, that message, which also included a short-clip, was marked as sent 'via Twitter for iPhone' - the main competitor of the Chinese giant. The tweet was removed in a matter of minutes, but by then, its screenshots had already started doing rounds on the internet.
Twitter Post
Here's the tweet in question
That was fast pic.twitter.com/y6k0FJF7Gq
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) January 1, 2019
Information
Technical error to blame
Similar errors have occurred before, but this particular case stemmed from a technical problem. According to an internal memo cited by Reuters, Huawei's outsourced social media manager Sapient had 'VPN problems' on desktop and was forced to tweet out the message via iPhone at midnight.
Huawei's response
However, Huawei took action against 'management oversight'
Though the tweet was sent by the handler, Huawei blamed in-house officials for "procedural incompliance and management oversight," the memo revealed. Owing to this, the company demoted two employees involved in the case by one rank and decreased their monthly salaries by CNY 5,000 (Rs. 50,000). It also froze the pay rank of its digital marketing director for a period of 12 months.
Response
Also, Huawei declined to comment on the action
Huawei declined to comment on its internal issues, while Sapient didn't respond when contacted by Reuters. However, in the memo, Chen Lifang, Huawei's corporate senior VP and director of the board, claimed that "the incident caused damage to the Huawei brand". Samsung had also committed the same mistake before, but this is the first time a response to such error has gone public.