Finnish PM Alexander Stubb blames Apple for Finland’s recession and subsequent S&P downgrading. Tech bloggers may sneer at him, but are they being too harsh?

Photo Credit: Magnus Fröderberg at Creative Commons

We’ve heard of new technology firms like Apple disrupting an entire industry, but an entire country?

That was what Alexander Stubb, the prime minister of Finland, told CNBC on Monday when he was asked why Standard and Poor had downgraded the credit rating of Finland’s economy on Friday from a AAA rating to AA+. Standard and Poor also changed the country’s economic outlook from “stable” to “negative.”

“A little bit paradoxically,” he said, “I guess one could say that the iPhone killed Nokia and the iPad killed the Finnish paper industry.”

Back in July, Stubbs made similar comments when he said “Steve Jobs took our jobs.”

Finland’s downfall

Microsoft purchased smartphone manufacturer Nokia in April after Nokia had lost a huge portion of its market share to Apple and Android devices. Finland’s paper industry has also struggled as more individuals consume information electronically.

As a result, this Scandinavian country with 5.4 million people has fallen into a recession, with its GDP declining for several years now.

“It remains uncertain whether other sectors can consistently compensate for the output loss in Finland’s wood and paper industry and its electronics industry,” S&P said on Friday.

Snickering from techies

The prime minister’s colorful language provoked a defensive reaction in the tech blogosphere.

“When in doubt, blame someone else,” commented Ingrid Lunden in TechCrunch.

Tech blogger Ronald Carlson wrote, “as anyone in an advanced economy, no one owns job — we just hold the position until someone younger, smarter and cheaper comes along to fill it.”

Why so defensive folks? After all, isn’t it a given that technological disruption will destroy jobs? (Whether it creates new ones to replace them is subject to debate). So yeah, a lot of people in Finland are possibly suffering, but isn’t that how technology works?

Now it’s up to the people of Finland to build a company that disrupts Apple. Could one of them be here?