Finnish PM blames Apple for economic downgrade
The Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb has blamed companies such as Apple for the collapse of two of the nation’s biggest industries - mobile and paper production.
Alexander Stubb will have to modernise Finland's economy
Speaking to CNBC, Stubb claimed that Apple’s iPhone killed Nokia and the iPad harmed book sales, after Nokia's mobile international market share dramatically collapsed.
Furthermore, Europe’s biggest paper producers UPM-Kymmene and Stora Enso, who are based in Finland, are reportedly dealing with depleted demand for paper. As a result of the economic slump, the country was downgraded from AAA to a AA+ rating.
On the new rating, Finnish PM Alexander Stubb told CNBC: “We have two champions which went down. A little bit paradoxically I guess one could say that the iPhone killed Nokia and the iPad killed the Finnish paper industry, but we'll make a comeback."
"Forest is coming back in terms of bio energy and other things, and actually a new Nokia has emerged in terms of [the] Networks [business].”
He added: "Usually what happens is that when you have dire times you get a lot of innovation and I think from the public sector our job is to create the platform for it."
The PM later added on Twitter that he merely used Apple as an example of the issues Finland is facing economically from developing technologies.
.@petteri Not blaming anyone, except the mirror. I use those two examples to illustrate the need for change. Can't do much about headlines.
— Alexander Stubb (@alexstubb) October 13, 2014
Following Nokia’s mobile sector hitting hard times, Microsoft purchased the department for $7.2bn, giving Windows smartphones the ability to compete with rivals Apple and Google.