Huawei is organizing a giveaway on their Facebook page, giving away a Mate 10.
Artículo disponible en Español | Article disponible en Français
During Huawei’s “Huawei Connect 2018” event, held in Shanghai between the 10 and the 12 October 2018, the company will be streaming the conference on their Facebook page. To participate in the giveaway, users have to watch said livestream and take screenshots of their favourite moments.
If the user is participating on Facebook, he’ll have to post his favourite screenshot as a public post on his Facebook profile. In addition, he’ll have to share his thoughts on his favourite speakers, mention Huawei (@Huawei) and add the #HuaweiConnect hashtag to the publication.
On Twitter, the user will have to do basically the same, post the screenshot of his favourite moment on Twitter, with the same hashtag, #HuaweiConnect, mention Huawei (@Huawei) and share his thoughts on his favourite speakers, just as on Facebook.
Huawei’s Facebook page is over here.
The full giveaway conditions are here.
The contest will run from the 10th to the 12th of October, as previously mentioned, from 9 a.m. (UTC +8, for Europe being 2 a.m. as Brussels time is UTC+2) to 5 p.m. (UTC +8, for Europe being 11 a.m. as Brussels time is UTC+2). The winners will be announced the 15th October, and participants must be over 18 to participate. For most, this is the information needed. For the rest, we’ll look a bit deeper into this giveaway and what Huawei Connect is.
Let’s start by the event itself. Huawei Connect is an event organized by Huawei in Shanghai between the 10 and the 12th October, and that has already been organized in the past, such as last year with Huawei Connect 2017. Last year’s edition was focused on the Cloud, while this year is focused on AI. But not AI for photography, no, AI in general for business, AI applied to services and infrastructure.
During the event, a series of people will speak, both from Huawei, such as Eric Xu, the current rotating chairman of the company, but also people from private companies such as Orange, Microsoft or Audi. The event is also composed of a series of exhibition halls, with industry leaders present to showcase the latest innovations in various domains such as AI, IoT and others.
More information about Huawei Connect 2018 is available on Huawei’s dedicated website.
Going back to the giveaway, there are a few things to clear. For instance, the image used is a Mate 10 Pro, while the giveaway mentions a Mate 10. The Mate 10 Pro fingerprint reader is on the back, while on the Mate 10 it is on the front.
Mate 10 
Mate 10 Pro
This might be slightly misleading, but when participating to a contest, people should read the terms and conditions carefully, and the Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro are pretty much the same device, so it doesn’t matter that much.
Asking users to use the hashtag #HuaweiConnect and giving their thoughts on a specific speaker is clearly a way to generate buzz/traffic/relevance, using the participants. Morally, this could be questionable, as we all know who will be participating to this kind of giveaway: random people from poor and developing countries, who’s comments sometimes are barely understandable, due to how poorly they are written. Asking contestants to write their “thoughts” on a professional-oriented event, with complicated language/ideas involved, could “backfire”, although not in a way that will hurt Huawei. People going through the hashtag will be able to observe large amounts of rubbish comments, such as “cool”, “ok”, etc, as people participate to try and win a Mate 10. On top of this, Huawei specifies they’ll select winners “at random”, which means one could just take a screenshot of, say, the keynote of Zhang Huai, CIO of Shenzhen Airport Group, and say “Really enjoyed this keynote from Mr. Huai!” or something generic along those lines, and be counted as an entry.
Finally, the terms and conditions could definitely be classified as abusive, with sentences such as “Huawei reserves the right to change, revoke or revise the Terms & Conditions at any time without prior notice” or “In any case of any dispute, Huawei retains final interpretation and decision”. Then again, this is a giveaway, the company is giving people something for “free” (“free” being their time and generating some relevance to the subject, which, indirectly, could be considered as “free” advertisement).
Then again, participants are supposed to read these Terms & Conditions and by participating to the giveaway, they are accepting them. Those unhappy with said terms can just refrain from participating.
The company doesn’t disclose either how many Mate 10 they’ll be giving away. Huawei does mention “Huawei will select the winners […] winners will be announced by October 15, 2018”, which means they intend to give away more than one Mate 10, although “winners” can easily be just two. We’ll find out on October 15th anyway.
