Finland Is In Trouble And The Finnish Prime Minister Puts Blame On Apple For Everything
When in doubt, blame someone else. Because that's what you do.
By Sadho Ram — 14 Oct 2014, 06:33 PM — Updated almost 10 years ago
According to Alexander Stubb, the Finnish prime minister, Apple is responsible for bringing down two of Finland's biggest economic exports — Nokia and paper
Finland lost its AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor’s last week, thanks to the “loss of global market share in the key information technology sector [and] structural retrenchment of the important forestry sector,” according to S&P. Today, Finnish prime minister Alexander Stubb laid the blame for the decline of its tech and paper industries at the feet of one company: Apple.
qz.com
He said that "the iPhone killed Nokia and the iPad killed the paper industry, but we'll make a comeback"
“We have two champions which went down,” Stubb told CNBC. “I guess one could say that the iPhone killed Nokia and the iPad killed the Finnish paper industry, but we’ll make a comeback.”
cnbc.comIt’s not the first time that he’s set up Apple as the shorthand scapegoat for the country’s problems — Stubb made similar, pithy comments back in July when he said that “Steve Jobs took our jobs.”
techcrunch.com
Before the debut of the iPhone in 2007, Nokia was worth USD150 billion, accounting for a quarter of Finland's economic growth from 1998 to 2007 as well as paying a fifth of all corporation tax in the country, according to qz.com
But since the advent of the touchscreen smartphone, Nokia’s shares steadily lost three-quarters of their value before Microsoft swooped and bought the company’s mobile phone business for $7 billion last year. What’s left of the old Nokia now focuses on telecoms network equipment, an industry that isn’t exactly in rude health.
qz.com
And the outlook for Finland's paper companies is not great either
Shares of Stora Enso have shed nearly half of their value over the past five years. It might be a stretch to blame the iPad for the decline of books, magazines, and newspapers across the world, but people are definitely consuming more digital content on devices by Apple and its competitors—including Stubb himself:
qz.com
Could someone send me a link to the @BBCHARDtalk interview? One that works on an iPad in Finland. Much appreciated.
— Alexander Stubb (@alexstubb) October 9, 2014
However, the Prime Minister is positive on Finland's future
“Forest is coming back in terms of bio energy and other things,” he told CNBC.
qz.com
“And actually a new Nokia has emerged. 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.”
cnbc.comComing back to his initial comments, while coming up with a decent soundbite is not an uncommon goal for politicians and their spin doctors, citing Apple for past problems is lame and weak-looking
Android, and Android handset makers like Samsung, were by far the bigger threat to Nokia’s dominant position as the world’s biggest handset maker. Samsung eventually overtook Nokia for pole position in 2012.
techcrunch.com
Moreover, Apple has actually been paying Nokia money for years now, under IP licensing agreements. The exact amount of those payments has never been disclosed, but in 2013, when Nokia was still a single company, its then-CEO Stephen Elop said that the company would make more than $650 million in patent licensing deals that year from the likes of Apple and others.
techcrunch.com