Huawei reportedly punishes workers for tweeting from official account on iPhone

Huawei may have overtaken Apple as the world's second largest phone vendor in 2018, but at least two of its workers seem to prefer the iPhone.

The Chinese phone maker tweeted "Happy 2019" from its official account at 11:31 p.m. on Dec. 31, with a "Twitter for iPhone" stamp, the South China Morning Post reported Friday.

Huawei deleted and replaced the tweet, but not quickly enough to stop people from getting screenshots of the original.

The company blamed an agency it hired for overseas social media, but also punished the two employees who oversaw ties to that agency, according to Bloomberg. It reported that an internal memo indicated they'd had 5,000 yuan ($730) cut from their monthly salaries and were demoted a single level.

The memo apparently revealed that one was head of Huawei's digital marketing team, and noted that the error "exposed flaws in our processes and management."

In addition, Huawei's digital marketing director will get their pay rank freeze for 12 months, 9to5Mac reported.

The incident came days after Huawei broke internal records by shipping more than 200 million smartphones in 2018. It also followed shortly after company CFO Wanzhou Meng was detained in Canada, with the possibility of extradition to the US over charges the company violated sanctions by doing business with Iran.

President Trump may also issue an executive order limiting US wireless carriers' ability to purchase network gear from Huawei and other foreign companies deemed to pose national security risks.

Huawei didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

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