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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Huawei punishes staff with pay cuts for tweeting via iPhone

Huawei has punished two of its staff after a marketing tweet was sent out for New Year’s Day with the label “via Twitter for iPhone.”

Both of these workers have been demoted one rank and had their monthly salaries cut by 5,000 yuan (approximately R10 000) according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. Huawei’s digital marketing director, will have his pay rank frozen for a year.

According to the memo, it indicated that an outsourced social media firm, Sapient, encountered “VPN problems” with a desktop it was using for publishing, so instead turned to an iPhone with a roaming SIM card to trigger the message at midnight on New Year’s. Twitter is normally blocked in China, so a VPN (virtual private network) is a commonplace tool for reaching it.

The tweet — which read “Happy #2019” — was almost immediately deleted, but not before screenshots made their way to social networks like Weibo, where they were roundly mocked.

This is not the first time this has happened with Huawei. A notable example was when Israeli actress Gal Gadot, serving as a paid ambassador, promoted the Mate 10 Pro on Twitter but used her iPhone to do it.

The illusion of brand unity has become important at smartphone makers around the world, especially given the intense competition between iPhone and Android as platforms.

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