Stepper motors simply provide accurate and fast occasional rotational positioning. This requires high torque at a wide rpm range, including 0 rpm, for obvious reasons. stepper motors are a very bad application for induction motors, since everything other than steady state operation requires advanced control systems and switching power supply circuitry. For the basic induction motor without an advanced control system, the starting torque must be provided by inefficient means, and is still very limited.

Synchronous motors are motors where the rotation of the magnetic field is synchronous with the rotation of the motor. For all induction motors, the induced field is a result of a varying magnetic field across the element in question. This implies that the speed of the rotor must be different than the speed of the magnetic field. Thus, no induction motor is a synchronous motor, almost by definition.