Apple and Huawei have been in a crazy competition over the past years on who’ll sell more smartphones, with the two tech giants constantly fluctuating between the second place at the most sold smartphones. However, as reported by the South China Morning Post, Huawei CEO Ren Zhangfei was spotted carrying an iPad at an airport, lighting up the social media site Weibo and striking the question: what does the Huawei CEO prefer?
Users from Weibo were greeted by what at first appears to be a normal picture of a man in an airport security line, with an officer handling an iPad from his bag. However, once you recognize it’s Ren Zhangfei, Huawei founder and CEO in the picture, the shock flooded the social media network. According to the report, Huawei declined to comment, but it’s certain from the photo that the owner of the iPad is, in fact, him. Additionally, it doesn’t surprise us given that he has already expressed his sympathies toward Apple’s product.
Back in May, Ren told the Chinese media that he’s a big fan of Apple’s product, saying that while “Huawei products are ultimately commodities,” he still buys his children and family iPhones adding that “one can’t narrowly think love for Huawei should mean loving Huawei phones.”
It’s also interesting to note that Ren’s daughter and Huawei’s CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was caught carrying an iPhone 7, iPad Pro and MacBook Air at the time she was arrested in Canada.
When USA blacklisted Huawei earlier this year, and the nationalist calls for boycotting Apple products in China rose, Huawei CEO also said in an interview with Bloomberg that he’d oppose any plans to ban Apple products in China. In the same interview he also referred to Apple as his teacher.
“As a student, why go against my teacher? Never,” Ren said in a Bloomberg interview
An Huawei CEO being spotted with an iPad at an airport security line is not the only situation where the CEO of some large tech company has been seen with competitor products. For example, when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he was spotted boasting an IBM-powered ThinkPad during the time he was working on a keynote presentation, although the laptop wasn’t running the Windows operating system.
While there’s nothing wrong with Ren carrying an iPad with him, but the same rules aren’t applied when it comes to Huawei employees using Apple products in the company, which stirred up a drama that saw two Huawei workers who were tweeting from an iPhone get demoted and their salaries reduced, as per Bloomberg. Apparently, it’s only okay for the Huawei CEO to use Apple’s products.
What do you think about Huawei’s CEO being seen with an iPad at an airport? Should tech giant owners stick only to using their own products, or not?
