Microsoft is resting on its laurels, Steve Wozniak says

Good old Woz, you can always rely on him to give a good quote. The Apple co-founder has been speaking his mind again recently, telling the BBC that Microsoft has been resting on its laurels of late.

Steve Ballmer announced this week he'll be stepping down as head of Microsoft within the next 12 months. But according to Woz, his time there wasn't as significant as his predecessor Bill Gates'.

Microsoft has had a lack of "really great, new surprises", and it's been "resting on their markets that they built up a long, long time ago", Woz said. "And that's pretty dangerous," he added.

Unsurprisingly, Wozniak was full of praise for Apple. Despite being a big company, "full of management and bureaucracy and all that stuff", Apple "found the formulas" to keep innovating.

So what of Tim Cook, the current head of Apple? Is he the right man to lead the company? Woz thinks so, saying Steve Jobs "more or less" chose Cook to succeed him. And he had a word for the naysayers who say Apple hasn't brought out a really innovative product for a while: "The great advances for mankind don't happen every year."

The key to Samsung's recent success, according to Woz, is its marketing might, and the fact it's managed to reach emerging markets where Apple hasn't.

"Samsung had great marketing prowess," Woz said. "They also had distribution channels in so many markets of the world that Apple was not in, because Apple more or less grew up under the Macintosh, which had a low world market share.

"You are going up against people that already have the connections, the business strategies, the business methodologies of those other parts of the world. It is going to be a fight for Apple and a worthy fight."

Is Woz right about Microsoft? Who should succeed Ballmer? And who will win in the fight between Apple and Samsung? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.

Image credit: BBC