Steve Wozniak suggests Apple could find success with an Android-powered phone

Even if you don’t like Apple, it’s hard to not like Steve Wozniak. The Apple co-founder is no longer part of the day-to-day operations of Apple, but he always has plenty to say.

Wozniak is a major Apple fan but he’s also not afraid to call Apple out on its weaknesses. Whether he’s talking smack about Siri, saying that Apple is behind the times or speaking out against the patent wars — things are never boring around the Woz. Granted sometimes the things WoZ says are more than a little out there in left field, and the Apple co-founder’s most recent comments certainly fall into that category.

 In an interview with WIRED, Wozniak spoke on a broad range of Apple-related topics, but it was his remarks about the idea of Apple building an Android handset that really stood out.

“There’s nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market,” said Wozniak. “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.”

Now its important to note that WoZ doesn’t necessarily think Apple will actually make such a move or even that they should, he’s just musing at the possibility and noting that Apple could do it. He also believes Apple would be able to compete very well because of Apple’s hardware quality. It’s true that Apple has the power and means to build an Android device, as nothing is stopping, at least from a technical standpoint.

Android is open-source, anyone can use it. That said, we can’t imagine Google would be all that willing to hand over Google Play certification to such a product, so the aPhone would probably need its own Appstore for Android, or it would have to partner with someone like Amazon.

In the long run, it’s hard to imagine who this Frankensteinian iAndroid device would appeal to, especially without Play services. Perhaps as a device for emerging markets that would have iOS-like characteristics and a budget oriented price tag (sort of like the idea behind Normandy)?

Musing aside, there’s no way such a device will ever come to pass. Even though Android has eaten away at their global marketshare, there are still tons of Apple faithful out there that are more than happy to keep buying iPhones that run on iOS. We don’t expect this situation anytime soon, either.

Still, in a crazy alternate universe where such a device was given the green light, would you consider an Apple-built handset if it ran Android and supported the Play store? Do you agree with WoZ’s assessment that Android users want “the precious looks of sylings” that Apple has to offer? Let us know what you think in the comments below.