A WDS study of 600,000 support calls across Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia shows that the WP7 devices are less susceptible to hardware failure than their Android counterparts. In the year-long study that included WP7, Android, iOS and RIM devices, WDS compared the number of calls per OS with the ones where hardware failure was the culprit. Though WP7's 9% hardware failure out-performed Android's 14%, it still finished in a close third behind iOS' 8%. Surprisingly, RIM came in at number one with a meager 3.7% failure rate.
The primary reason given for the differences between brands was the number of OEMs who manufacture devices for each company. Android, licensed as open source, is used by 35 different manufacturers, some of which were much more likely to produce failing devices than others. Microsoft also licenses out WP7, but with stricter hardware requirements. Meanwhile, Apple and RIM produce their own software and hardware, and thus have tighter quality control.
WDS admits that the study is not fool proof, as it could only determine what percentage of calls could be attributed to hardware, but not the percentage of over all calls in comparison to the over all number of phones shipped in that period of time. Either way, the outcome is pretty positive for Microsoft, whose hardware reliability rate will likely see a boost once Nokia's WP7 handsets hit the market. Recently we caught a glimpse of what's in store. Nokia has near spotless reputation when it comes to their hardware.
Source: PCMag; Via: WPSauce
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