According to a study done by the WSD (Wireless Data Services), Android handsets break more than BlackBerry and or Apple. Over a 12 month period WDS has tracked how consumers interact with the Android ‘ecosystem’, including analysis of 600,000 technical support calls, to identify the platform’s ‘cost-of-ownership’for operators. Their findings concluded that many operator systems and processes have not kept pace with Android’s growth, adding additional strain to infrastructure and business models.
The reason is due to Android’s costly hardware in comparison to Apple’s iPhones and RIM’s BlackBerry. Cheaper Android models which cost very little to make have leveraged Android as a dominant platform in smartphones, attracting dozens of manufacturers ranging from Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and even some unknown Asian manufacturers.
“While this price point sounds very attractive, when you look at a total cost of ownership it’s a different story,” said Tim Deluca-Smith, Vice President of Marketing at WDS, which offers device management and call center services to operators.
Android’s share of the global smartphone market rose to 57 per cent in the third quarter from 25 per cent a year earlier and just 3 per cent two years earlier, boosted by the success of models from Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson, according to research firm Canalys.Any OS vendor releasing updates is susceptible to such problems, however given their tighter hardware
ecosystems it seems that both Apple and RIM suffer less. At the time of writing not enough information
regarding the Windows Phone Mango update was available for comparison.
Full study here
via telegraph.co.uk