Prime Minister Alexander Stubb has made headlines in the international media in recent days. In his latest encounter on Monday, he spoke to US broadcaster CNBC, pointing the finger of blame at tech giant Apple for the downfall of two of Finland’s biggest industries.
Describing Nokia and the Finnish paper industry as “two champions that went down”, the Finnish Prime Minister nonetheless adopted an optimistic tone with regards to the future of Finnish industry.
“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 in the CNBC interview. 
Nokia’s devices and services business was bought out by US firm Microsoft in April this year at a time when the former front runner was feeling the brunt of a long struggle to maintain market share against rivals Apple and Samsung.
Again endeavouring to remain upbeat in response to questions regarding Standard and Poor’s recent downgrading of Finland’s credit status, Prime Minister Stubb urged the nation to simply “keep at it.”
“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,” he said.
Read more: Yle
