Apple Should Release an Android Phone, Steve Wozniak Says

Apple should consider releasing an Android phone as it could compete very well given the company’s manufacturing choices, Steve Wozniak said in an interview with Wired.

“There’s nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market,” said Wozniak–who, it should be noted, is no longer involved in the day-to-day workings of the company. “We could compete very well. People like the precious looks of stylings and manufacturing that we do in our product compared to the other Android offerings. We could play in two arenas at the same time.”

Since an Android phone made by Apple is out of the question — although it technically is possible — Wired asked the company’s former co-founder whether Apple’s innovation has stalled out.

Woz rejected the idea, and when asked about rumoured products such as the smart watch or iTV — both allegedly in the works — he expressed his belief that Apple is waiting for the right moment to release the right product.

“The great products really come from secret development,” he said. “You put small teams of great people on them and they aren’t bothered by other people commenting on what they’re doing while they’re doing it. A whole new category of products doesn’t happen very often. It might happen once a decade. Sometimes you have to wait for one of those to come about.”

He also pointed to Apple’s choices in products compared to Samsung, for example, and warned about defining innovation. The iPhone maker carefully decides what features it will put in a device, and it didn’t stuff the iPhone 5s with new features.

Samsung, on the other hand, does exactly the opposite: It throws in a lot of features.

“If you have something really good, don’t change it; don’t screw it up,” he said. “You pick up a Samsung phone and say smile and it takes a picture, but how much innovation is that? That’s just throwing in a lot of features.”

“People don’t really choose their smartphones based on features,” he added. “I think Apple is superior at being able to say no.”

And if we look at the US market share, we can see that 41.8% of smartphone users tend to choose the iPhone rather than a Samsung device, which was the choice of 26%, according to the comScore study.

Also, it is worth noting that Apple sold 51 million iPhones worldwide in Q4 2013, while Samsung sold 86 million (estimate). That’s a big difference in numbers, but the reports are silent about the sales of the high-end Samsung Galaxy series smartphones.