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Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple, said in an interview that the company he helped to establish could make smartphones based on Google Android operating system in order to boost market share. At the same time, he said that the iPhone handsets have the right amount of features and capabilities and do not need addition of pseudo innovations available on other products.
Apple exclusively uses iOS operating system on its iPhone smartphones and iPad media tablets. This allows the company to earn not only on hardware, but also on software since every purchase made in its app store brings additional revenue to the platform owner. Moreover, iOS is Apple’s competitive advantage since it provides similar experience on different hardware, unlike Google Android. Another competitive advantages of Apple are great design and excellent built quality of iPhones, iPads and Macs.
In a bit to boost Apple’s smartphone market share, Steve Wozniak proposes to take those two advantages that Apple has and use them on the market of Google Android-based handsets. He is confident that such “iAndroids” or “iPhonoids” would be popular.
“There’s nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market,” Steve Wozniak said in an interview with Wired. “We could compete very well. People like the precious looks of styling and manufacturing that we do in our product compared to the other Android offerings. We could play in two arenas at the same time.”
Technically, it should not be a problem to install Google Android onto iPhone. Android is an open-source operating system, so it can be tailored for iPhones hardware. However, using Android on an iPhone is akin to using Windows on Mac: technically possible, but greatly impractical.
Still, Mr. Wozniak defended Apple’s decision not to pour in all the possible features and capabilities into its smartphone just to increase their count and add extra bells and whistles to the product.
“If you have something really good, don’t change it; don’t screw it up,” said the Apple co-founder. “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.”
KitGuru Says: Steve Wozniak is well known for making rather controversial claims. Not everything he says should be taken seriously. The co-founder of Apple is not involved into day-to-day operations of the company and hardly has influence onto its roadmap. Nonetheless, some of things he says look definitely interesting.
I have to say I disagree; Android, like iOS, offers the same experience across hardware platforms, albeit much more customisable visually and functionally. Plus, the option of installing alternate builds is much easier on Android devices than Apple and often doesn’t involve voiding any warranty.
I also disagree that using Android on an iPhone or Windows on a Mac are impractical; They are practical options to someone whose needs require it. MacOS is good, but if there are features I need from Windows (or Linux!) then I would be happier if I were able to install those operating systems. The same goes for mobile devices: Offering customers the CHOICE of how to set up their own personal system is of course going to broaden the customer base while keeping customers happier, in general.
All that said, I don’t know how likely Apple are to take Wozniak’s advice here 🙂