Apple to blame for Finland's ratings downgrade
Alexander Stubb, Finland's prime minister, said Monday Apple was to blame for the demise of the country's two biggest industries, which resulted to an economic downturn and a ratings downgrade for the Scandinavian country.
Apple Inc.
$169.02
13:09 24/04/24
Microsoft Corp.
$409.06
13:10 24/04/24
Nokia Corp.
€10.60
18:16 26/06/09
Standard & Poor's downgraded Finland's sovereign debt rating to AA+ from AAA on 10 October, citing weak development, exposure to sanctions-hit Russia as the country's main issues.
S&P warned that Finland could experience "protracted stagnation" due to its ageing population, shrinking workforce and weakening external demand.
"We have two champions which went down," Stubb told CNBC on Monday, explaining that the newspaper industry had also experienced a rough time.
Finland is a key location for Europe's biggest paper producers, UPM-Kymmene and Stora Enso, while the industry is crucial for the country's economy.
"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," Stubb said.
Microsoft acquired Nokia in April but the emergence of Apple and Samsung has seen the Finnish phone producer lose a sizeable share of the market over the last couple of years, while figures released by statistics by the Finnish Forest Research Institute at the end of 2013 warned about the state of the forest and paper industry.
The Finnish prime minister, however, remained upbeat about both sectors' prospective.
"Forest is coming back in terms of bio energy and other things. And actually a new Nokia is emerged in terms of (Nokia) Networks," he said.
"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."