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Finnish PM: Apple has DESTROYED FINLAND

Well, the mobile phone manufacturing bit, anyway

The Prime Minister of Finland has claimed that Apple destroyed his country's biggest industry: mobile phone manufacturing.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Alexander Stubb went on to say that Cupertino had also annihilated the paper-making industry, which was his nation's other pride and joy.

However, a leading Finnish analyst has rubbished the PM's claims, telling us that Nokia "committed suicide".

As for the paper industry? Well, that seems a little too silly an accusation for anyone to take very seriously, unless you seriously think the iPad is the one device that finally brought about a paperless world.

"We have two champions which went down. One could say that the iPhone killed Nokia and the iPad killed the Finnish paper industry, but we'll make a comeback," Prime Minister Alexander Stubb said.

"We just have to keep at it."

However the analyst John Strand questioned this reading. "Apple didn’t kill Nokia," he said. "Nokia committed suicide. It's all about mismanagement.

"This claim that Apple killed two big industries is not true. It's a way to put the blame on someone else."

Strand has written extensively on the Nokia collapse, often aiming a swift kick right to nether regions of former CEO Stephen Elop, whom he has previously described as having a "dream of creating shareholder value like Gordon Gekko but ending up as Mr. Flop" instead.

He tracked Nokia's failure back to the Stephen Elop's "burning platforms" memo, in which he admitted falling behind competitors and heralded the end of the Symbian platform.

"Elop was not capable of communicating," the analyst told The Reg. "A restaurant would not show a sign admitting that the food was shitty, but promising to fix it in 12 months. He was telling operators that he wanted them to distribute our phones to tonnes of people around the world, but by the way we don't believe in the platform."

In several memorable blog posts, Strand also said there were difficulties inherent in being Finnish and trying to compete in a global marketplace.

"The Finnish language is difficult, especially if you are trying to make yourself sound sexy," he wrote in a piece which said Nokia had failed to communicate with the outside world. ®

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