Huawei has worked long and hard to make itself seem like a viable option in the world of smartphones. The struggle came from the fact that Huawei is a Chinese company, and companies based in China are stereotypically considered to offer low quality products that aren’t going to do you much good. Huawei has managed to change its reputation and establish itself as a solid competitor of the likes of Apple and Samsung, but a recent snafu on Twitter has resulted in a fair amount of embarrassment for the company.
The people handling Huawei’s official Twitter account posted a New Year’s greeting… from an iPhone. The metadata of the tweet clearly showed that the person handling Huawei’s Twitter account was using an iPhone, something that resulted in the company getting mercilessly mocked. According to the people at Huawei, this has hurt their brand and as a result the people that made this mistake will be getting demoted and will receive a $700+ pay cut. Additionally, the person that actually sent out the tweet will have their salary growth frozen until 2020.
Receiving news of the backlash that ensued from a mistake such as this one is not all that common, but the fact of the matter is that mistakes like this are actually pretty common. Samsung faced something like this last year when their Nigerian branch had to delete hundreds of tweets that had been sent out via iPhone. Additionally, celebrities getting sponsored by brands have frequently been caught using competitor phones. At the end of the day, things like this are the result of honest mistakes, although it is understandable that Huawei would want to take action against employees that ended up hurting their brand because of their carelessness.
Featured Photo: REUTERS / Aly Song | Screenshot: Twitter / @ngetichpascal
