China’s Huawei Technologies has penalised two of its workers for New Year compliments sent on the company’s official Twitter handle using an iPhone, Reuters reports.
Huawei on New Year’s Eve wished followers a “Happy #2019” in a tweet. Due to Twitter’s feature of denoting devices, some people quickly picked up on the device it was sent with.
Although, this tweet was hastily deleted — screenshots of the gaffe have been distributed across social media.
This particular occurrence caused weighty damage to the Huawei’s brand, says corporate senior vice-president and director of the board Chen Lifang in an internal memo.
The blunder arose when third-party social media handler, Sapient suffered “VPN problems” with a desktop computer so it opted for an iPhone with a roaming SIM card to send the message on time at midnight, Huawei said.
Twitter is barred in China like other foreign services from Facebook and Alphabet. So, it will take a virtual private network (VPN) connection to gain access to gain access to these social platforms.
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The error was as a result of procedural non-compliance and management omission, and the company had lowered two employees responsible by one rank and cut their monthly salaries by 5,000 yuan ($728.27), according to Huawei.
In addition, the pay rank of Huawei’s digital marketing director will also be frozen for 12 months.
This is not the first time use of the Apple product has caused embarrassment. Last year, editor-in-chief of nationalistic tabloid Global Times, Hu Xijin was mimicked for using iPhone to express support for Huawei and ZTE Corp.
