Apple vs. RIM: Study Shows iPhone More Reliable than Blackberry

by: Erick Schonfeld November 07, 2008 | about stocks: AAPL / RIMM    

Erick Schonfeld

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The iPhone (AAPL) is twice as reliable as the Blackberry (RIMM) after one year of ownership, a new study by SquareTrade finds. SquareTrade, which sells extra warranties for cell phones and other devices, looked at the failure rates of 15,000 phones covered under its plans. The malfunction rate for iPhones after one year is 5.6 percent, compared to 11.2 percent for the Blackberry and 16.2 percent for the Treo (PALM).

Surprisingly, battery problems are less of an issue for the iPhone than for the other two brands. Less than 0.5 percent of iPhone malfunctions are due to the battery dying, compared to about one percent for the BlackBerry and Palm. The iPhone also has fewer call quality problems than the other two.

The biggest problem for all three phones is malfunctions involving the touch screen or keyboard. For the iPhone in particular, this is an area that needs work. According to the study, "one third of all reported iPhone problems were screen-related." Many of these were dead spots in the older 2G phones, but the 3G phones have their own screen issues.

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This article has 29 comments:

  •  
    Nov 07 02:19 PM
    15,000 phones in the study? When apple and RIM are selling millions per quarter. Can the results be considered at all accurate with such a relatively small sample size?
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 02:40 PM
    @.crazylegs - You don't need to test every sample in a population to derive statistics for a population. There are very well worked-out sampling methods to determine how many are necessary to test. If this company is in the business of selling or analyzing warranties they know how their actuarial table works and picked a number that was sufficient.

    Where's Eric Savitz when you need him? Will he report this?
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 02:42 PM
    Yes.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 03:46 PM
    15,000 is an enormous sample size. Especially if you take into account that there is not very much to differentiate individual phones in the same class (i.e. one 3G iPhone is pretty much the same as the next). Since there are presumably many different RIMM models, it is expected that there may be significant differences in the performance of the various models. But overall the sample size is huge!


    On Nov 07 02:19 PM .crazylegs.. wrote:

    > 15,000 phones in the study? When apple and RIM are selling millions
    > per quarter. Can the results be considered at all accurate with
    > such a relatively small sample size?
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 04:26 PM
    I'm getting ready to buy a Blackberry ... I don't care what this small sample shows. EVERYONE I know with iPhone has had phones replaced because of technical issues. They are NOT reliable, no matter what this small sample shows.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 04:32 PM
    Wait until they do this at the 18 month mark. If you listen to the Rimm conference call, the average blackberry is only used for 18 moonths which is pathetic.

    My iphone is now at 16 months with no problems. I have dropped it in parking lots, dropped it on concrete floors, caught the earbud cord on a shopping cart and had it fly across the grocery store. Even kicked it facedown across my garage floor. No scratches on the screen. Did manage to get one tiny scratch which may have been while golfing with the divot tool in my pocket.

    My wife has retired her iphone after she dropped it for the 20th time. Concrete, wood, pavement were no problem but dropping the phone on a tile floor managed to put a hairline crack from top to bottom. Problem was that it still worked like it had never been dropped. So she got a 3g and now the iphone is being used by the kids.

    PS: the battery still works great. The only reason that Blackberry needs a battery door is so that when it locks up you can open it, remove the battery, reinstall the battery, close the phone and reboot. Now that is ridiculous. I used to have to do that with my Sony Ericsson phone that lasted 4 years.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 04:37 PM
    Marcy, you are in a very, very small minority. Everyone I know who owns the iPhone absolutely loves the thing. It will only get a lot bigger here & across the globe. They will average 7-8 million sold per quarter for quite a while. We are in the early stages of this thing taking off.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 04:49 PM
    Oops: My comment above, "Yes," was meant as a reply to the first poster, not the second. (We both submitted our replies at the same time.) IOW, "Is a sample of 15,000 adequate?"--Yes.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 05:11 PM
    Wow Hayweed, u did all that to the phone and not even a scratch on yer iphone ?? give me a break ! all that happened to my first blackberry and it still works ! got scratches on it for sure, but i didn't kick it. try buying a protective skin for it... or can ya get thouse for only blackberrys.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 07 09:12 PM
    Sample size is fine, but the problem is that RIMM makes many models whereas Apple only has ONE 3G phone! It's like saying let's compare the reliability of the 2008 BMW 7 Series versus that of the entire Toyota car line! Sure, Toyota also makes the highly-rated Lexus LS series, but to compare one model against the entire stable of cars in their line-up would be ridiculous. I'd rather see the iPhone 3G compared directly to the Blackberry Bold or to the upcoming Storm.

    Bottomline: Only and Apple fanboy would find this study of any value.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 02:46 AM
    Gee Wally, I don't know how we did it when we had the one wired phone on the wall in the kitchen, and Mom, and Dad could listen to everything we said, and golly, how on earth did we ever get by not being able to call one another on the way to the store, or school. I guess we just didn't understand. As for myself, I hate phones, and having to answer to someone all the time. Sometimes I just leave my phone at home so no one can bother me. I figure, if its important, somebody will get a hold of me some how.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 02:53 AM
    Oh, and Wally, don't forget about the party line we had to share with four other houses, on that one phone we had. It was fun picking up the phone, and listening to Mrs. Mondello next door talking to Mrs. Rutherford down the street, but it was rotten if you needed to make a call, and had to wait until they were done talking.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 09:37 AM
    Let's define RELIABLE correctly:

    5.6% failure for iPhone means iPhone is 94.4% reliable
    11.2% failure for Blackberry means Blackberry is 88.8% reliable

    Therefore the iPhone is 6% more reliable than Blackberry…but that’s not as grabby of a headline I guess...
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 11:25 AM
    maybe the iphone is better for the reason that it concentrates on one instrument. and Marcy...honestly...how many people can you know who returned iphones?...i find that post hard to fathom. i know a lot of people with iphones and not one has replaced any except to get the new 3G. mine is wonderful. i never had a Blackberry or Treo but I buy products after doing research and all the research says the iphone beats anything else on the planet.
    6% more reliable isn't something to sneeze at...i'm sure Rimm would prefer to have the numbers reversed.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 01:41 PM
    this topic is getting a bit boring, i've owned a bb for ages never had any problems its always been reliable,, and at least if anything was to happen my battery is changable they only last so long. i even use this thing as modem for constant downloads and never had problem...and since i actually have a keyboard i dont have to worry about a touch screen issues. this article is totally biased
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 03:01 PM
    This whole dialogue is hilarious. On the one hand we have someone asking if 15,000 phones is a a large enough sample size when the company who did the study makes or loses money based upon failure rates, and thus should know its business. On the other hand we have someone using her limited anecdotal experience to extrapolate over the entire production quality of a product, or someone who extrapolates that because his single (Blackberry) phone has not had a problem, that the article can't be true. Or that it's unfair to compare one of many models that Blackberry makes with the ONE model that Apple makes - (even though the rational consequence of more models is quick-hit engineering and one could expect MORE quality issues simply due to variation).

    People, there is mathematics dealing with failure rates and it's impossible to imagine that a company like Apple is not continuously looking at its material science, its production methods, its batteries, its design, and its suppliers, all to improve products and to lower failure rates while making them simultaneously more affordable. There always seems to be some kind of whisper campaign to imply that Apple products have some kind of deadly quality bugs. Look at their revenue growth and ask yourself if they really could grow at that rate with deep and serious quality issues. Yes, they make compromises to allow their devices to perform in the way they do. For instance, I've had a better phone than iPhone. But I have never had a phone that had an iPod, visual voicemail, SMS conversations, a touchscreen, Google maps, a decent headphone with built-in microphone, an accelerometer to toggle views, downloadable applications, WiFi.

    Just watch the Apple Q4 earnings video to see how much Apple cares about manufacturing improvements. The reliability as demonstrated by this study is just the icing on the cake.

    By the way, what's value does the derogatory 'fanboy' label add to the discussion? Zero. Leave it at home.

    PS @David_R: The correct way to state it is that iPhone has 50% fewer problems than Blackberry and about 70% fewer than Treo.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 03:11 PM
    @anon123666: Yeah, let's compare the iPhone with the Storm. Does anyone know where we can find some Storms to compare? What's that? They're not shipping yet? Oh. Well, maybe we can check again in 3 weeks? Possibly? Maybe?

    And although your reference to Lexus/Toyota/BMW seems to confound quality with reliability, you did backhandedly made the case for why more models and variations create a higher probability of quality defects. Toyota made limited model variation their bread and butter and look at their reputation for quality and reliability. While Oldsmobile could offer you literally 10 million combinations for paint, carpet, radio, Toyota gave less than 300 for the Camry.

    Do one thing and do it well and you will always have customers.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 03:22 PM
    Oh, and by the way....Palm is struggling for survival. It's not hard to imagine that they have shed resources that could have made their products (like the Treo) better. No amount of Bono can make Palm any better than its P&L, and that's not that great. Given that they lost money in each of the last 4 quarters, do you think that they can make better quality products over time?

    And Apple? I'd be pretty confident that as they increased their number of worldwide employees by 50% in the past year, they hired engineers, designers, and material scientists to keep their products getting better and more reliable.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 05:46 PM
    Depends on the sampling methodology.


    On Nov 07 02:19 PM .crazylegs.. wrote:

    > 15,000 phones in the study? When apple and RIM are selling millions
    > per quarter. Can the results be considered at all accurate with
    > such a relatively small sample size?
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 06:01 PM
    Reliability isn't RIM's biggest problem though, obsolesence is. Blackberries really only do phone and email with any credibility. Also, iPhones are no more expensive, yet they have thousands more uses. Finally, iPhone is just way cooler.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 08 10:10 PM
    I have read that Apple subcontracts a lot o their laptop manufacturing through Asus--a company with a strong reputation for quality control and reliability in their motherboards and laptops. I don't know if the iphone is being manufactured by Asus, but their choice of Asus for other products indicates what Apple thinks is important.

    Although I admire Apple engineering, I will never buy an Apple product for 2 reasons. First of all as an environmentalist, I am outraged by the way that Apple designs products for planned obsolescence, forcing their products to be thrown away and new products to be bought. Apple designed the ipod so that the battery could not be replaced, thus forcing the consumer to throw away the device after 18 or so months when the battery wore out. Since roughly 80% of the total energy of electronics are consumed in the manufacturing and only 20% in the operation of electronics, this means that Apple's planned obsolescence has caused a great deal of damage to the environment.

    The second reason to avoid Apple products and especially iphones is that Apple restricts how its products can be used and modified. Basically the consumer is placed in a jail--albeit a pretty jail. Apple controls its products with a fascist hand. For instance, Apple has decreed that developers of iphone software can only sell the software through Apple's website and Apple must get a cut of every sale. Apple arbitrarily decides whether the software can be released or not after developers have spend months working on it. Even though the iphone has a fully-functional OS, the consumer is only allowed to use that OS in ways that Apple decrees. In contrast, the users of Palm's Symbian, Google's Android Linux and the LiMo Foundation's Linux are not placed in cages and are freer to do what they want with their phones. Their operating systems are open source or are in the process of becoming open source and their users have the choice of hundreds of different programs from outside sources.

    Frankly, I don't see why anyone would want to buy an iphone (except to show off how superficial they are because they value image more than price and performance). The new crop of Linux-based phones are much better than the iphones. Apple's hardware is outrageously expensive and its software is too expensive as well. You can take the time to learn how to jailbreak an iphone, so that you can customize it and load free software onto your iphone, but you are better off buying a phone which was designed to let you customize it and doesn't tie your hand behind your back. You are much better off with a Linux phone which is open source and guarantees the freedom of the user. I recommend buying an OpenMoko Neo Freerunner or one of the new Android phones which allows you to tinker and customize it.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 09 03:01 PM
    TImbo: How does my reference to Lexus/Toyota/BMW seem to confound quality with reliability??? Both the JD Powers car surveys and THIS survey compared reliability--not quality. Learn to read.

    AND your post clearly indicates that you agree with me that comparing multiple phones versus a single model is not an accurate way to do a comparison....SO WHY NOT SIMPLY SAY THAT?? Answer: You are an Apple Fanboy and would never admit it.

    Case closed.

    On Nov 08 03:11 PM TimboM wrote:

    > @anon123666: Yeah, let's compare the iPhone with the Storm. Does
    > anyone know where we can find some Storms to compare? What's that?
    > They're not shipping yet? Oh. Well, maybe we can check again in 3
    > weeks? Possibly? Maybe?
    >
    > And although your reference to Lexus/Toyota/BMW seems to confound
    > quality with reliability, you did backhandedly made the case for
    > why more models and variations create a higher probability of quality
    > defects. Toyota made limited model variation their bread and butter
    > and look at their reputation for quality and reliability. While Oldsmobile
    > could offer you literally 10 million combinations for paint, carpet,
    > radio, Toyota gave less than 300 for the Camry.
    >
    > Do one thing and do it well and you will always have customers.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 10 09:45 AM
    i buy iPhone/iPod Touch for same reason i buy other Apple products-- i like them & they work for me allowing me to do what i want/need w/ relative ease & tech/customer support can't be beat. i don't give a hot patootie about "tinkering" w/ my computers. Windows & Linux people like to twiddle & tinker w/ hardware & software & i'm happy for you if this gives your life fulfillment & keeps you busy. i'd rather just do what i want/need to do, then go out w/ friends, go to the theatre, work in my yard or just take a nap.

    use whatever works for you & be happy. i am... happy in my little universe, built on an Apple ecosystem, w/ multiple Macs, iPods, Airport, iTunes, etc...
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 10 09:50 AM
    No way. The battery issue is beacuse of the push. The batt on my I phone is aweful. I have both phones and nothing can compete with my Black Berry
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 10 02:00 PM
    This argument is never ending. The reality is that its a matter of preference and choice and your cell phone provider and a lot of other factors that dont involve a 6% malfunction lead that entice customers to buy iPhones over Blackberry's and vice versa. These sort of reports render useless for no one else other than Apple fan kids and people who think 6% is a large number. Sentiment for both companies is bearish right now--Apple with over 400 predictions pushing it into the extremely bearish zone (www.predictwallstreet....). My predictions for both companies close today is down.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 11 01:23 AM
    i agree with chris, appl and rimm are both great companies. it's just that in this harsh environment the this vs that, and fundamentals dont apply anymore. i doubt we will see the end of this recession for a long time and sadly it will affect alot of good companies, people loosing their homes, job losses,credit problems are the main issues not cell phones which people wont be able to afford. things arent looking good at all
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 11 12:55 PM

    15000 is an awesome sample size. This sample size is more than adequate to detect a significant difference. This sample size exceeds our huge studies we do for cardiovascular disease medications.

    On Nov 07 02:19 PM .crazylegs.. wrote:

    > 15,000 phones in the study? When apple and RIM are selling millions
    > per quarter. Can the results be considered at all accurate with such
    > a relatively small sample size?
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 12 01:25 AM
    Its all a fad. Face it, by next year there will be something new out that everyone will just have to have. Does it work, and is it reliable. Look at the Razor. It was a piece of crap. Everyone I knew that had one said they broke, mu own included. All glitter, but junk. I would like a good phone, with a strong signal, and one I can watch the stock on. If I want a computer, or a camera, or video game, or want to watch a movie, I will not use my phone. You can't see anything that small anyway. Get on with your life.
    Reply | Link to Comment
  •  
    Nov 14 06:18 PM
    blackberry is rock solid, you can't compare it with delicate china, iphone
    Reply | Link to Comment
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