Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says his old company must continue to lead the way in mobile technology or else lose its cool to competitors like Samsung and HTC.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Wozniak said that Apple should consider opening up at least parts of its ecosystem to Android and Windows Phone users. He suggested offering those platforms access to iTunes would be a step in the right direction.
Wozniak told Bloomberg that Apple could not lean solely on its status as a luxury brand, saying that Apple was kind of losing its “cool.”
On the matter of a wristwatch iOS device, Wozniak said he thought it was a good idea if improvements were made to Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri. He cautioned that the company did not need to rush a product to market.
Wozniak also had some thoughts on the runners up in the mobile platform wars, BlackBerry and Microsoft’s Windows Phone. He said that while Windows may earn itself a share of the market, Blackberry would ultimately have to switch to the Android.
According to the latest numbers from Strategy Analytics released today, Apple’s iPhone 5 overtook Samsung’s Galaxy S3 to become the world’s best-selling smartphone model for the first time ever in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement that Apple’s iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S together accounted for 1 in 5 of all smartphones shipped worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2012.
