Finnish experts describe U.S. restrictions on Huawei as “rough” against “innocent users”

HELSINKI, May 21 (BERNAMA-NNN-XINHUA) -- The U.S. measures against Chinese telecom giant Huawei are “rough” against “innocent users,” Finnish observers have said.

Petteri Jarvinen, an IT expert and writer, noted that Washington’s hostile attitude towards Huawei has been known for a long time.

Yet “such a concrete action that hits innocent users is a surprising and rough measure,” Jarvinen said Monday on Finland’s national radio.

Mikko Hypponen, research director of Finnish security provider FSecure, noted that so far Huawei as a brand has not suffered in the Finnish market.

The fact that four out of 10 phones sold in Finland are Huawei supports this assumption, he told business daily Kauppalehti.

Jukka Manner, a professor of information network technology at Aalto University, said the restrictions ordered by the U.S. government might be beneficial to Huawei in the long term.

“Huawei will have to install an app store of its own in the new cell phones,” and major application providers are then likely to distribute their apps in Huawei’s app store, Manner told newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.

Citing alleged national security threats, the United States on May 16 put Huawei and its affiliates on a so-called “entity list” that faces restrictions regarding the sale or transfer of U.S. technologies.

Huawei said in a statement that the U.S. export control decision is in no one’s interest and will do significant economic harm to the American companies with which Huawei does business.

Also, restricting Huawei from doing business in the United States will only leave the U.S. lagging behind in 5G deployment, and eventually harming the interests of U.S. companies and consumers, it said.

In response to Google’s announcement to suspend some of its business cooperation with Huawei, Huawei said on Monday that it has the ability to continue to develop and apply the Android ecosystem.

–BERNAMA-NNN-XINHUA