Tesla May Dethrone Apple As Most Innovative Tech Company, Steve Wozniak Says

Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple along with Steve Jobs, told Bloomberg Sunday that Tesla could replace Apple as the most innovative tech company.

"I think Tesla is on the best direction right now. They've put an awful lot of effort into very risky things. I'm going to bet on Tesla," he told the publication.

When asked how Tesla is different from the company he founded, he added, "They started with a car -- the Tesla Model S -- that made little sense in engineering terms in how much you have to build for what price and what the market will be.” According to Wozniak, Tesla’s strength is that it is based on founder Elon Musk’s vision of how he would like to see the company’s products, such as the Model function for his own usage.

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While Apple is now a large company with a cumulative valuation upwards of $800 billion, Tesla is valued at $68 billion. But, both companies have developed in similar ways over time.

Both companies were small start-ups at one point of time, driven by the vision of a single person — in Apple’s case it was Steve Jobs and in Tesla’s case, it is Elon Musk. Both companies have disrupted the way things usually work in their respective industries. Apple was the first in the computer industry to use graphical user interfaces in PCs in the 80’s and in its second coming under the leadership of Jobs, it transformed the music player and smartphone industries, with the iPhone being the first major smartphone supportive of apps.

Tesla had a similar approach to the auto industry. Musk was the first to focus attention on autonomous, electric cars not just as a concept, but rather the execution. Before Tesla, electric cars were niche products but the company made the product a mainstream one and following Tesla’s lead, most major carmakers and even tech companies are now investing in self-driving and electric automobile technology.

The biggest similarity between both companies has been that their vision has been different than the prevalent norms and in most cases, way ahead of its time.

But, what Wozniak is indicating isn’t wrong either. While Apple has grown considerably in terms of size, it can’t be said to be on the forefront of innovation any longer and the biggest proof of this is the company’s flagship device, the iPhone. For years, Apple’s iPhone was way ahead of its Android rivals, in terms of the features it offered. In fact, every iPhone release brought out a feature that wasn’t to be found on any Android phone, right up to the iPhone 4, which came with Siri. But the market forces have caught up with Apple and the company is no longer at the forefront of innovation.

After iPhone 4, every new iPhone has had incremental or even large-scale changes in comparison to the previous generation of the device, but the device can no longer be said to be miles ahead of the competition. In fact, Android devices such the Samsung Galaxy S8, which offer features such as a 10nm processor, Bixby and Dual Audio might be way ahead of Apple in terms of features. Instead, like any large tech company, Apple is now consolidating its market share and making devices such as iPhone SE, a rehash of the iPhone 5, to cater to the budget consumer.

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Tesla, as Wozniak says, is a “young company” and is continuing to innovate in various areas, whether it be its cars, solar energy, space travel and even Musk’s latest obsessions – brain powered devices and tunneling machines.

As tech companies mature, market factors start affecting them more and their tendency for innovation is replaced by market capitalization, as happened in Apple’s case. Tesla is still in its nascent years compared to Apple, which is why Wozniak’s assumption could be correct.