Are High Return Rates Spoiling Android’s Strong Sales?
Over the past two year’s Android has rocketed from holding virtually no market share to leading smartphone platforms the world over in terms of handsets shipped, beating out the likes of Apple and RIM. It has been shown in countless statistic after countless statistic, and surveys and projections don’t show Google’s green monster slowing down anytime soon. But are consumers ultimately not satisfied with the Android product? According to sources speaking to TechCrunch, the answer in some cases is yes at a rate of 30 to 40 percent. Emphasis on some cases.
Yes, the iPhone carries a very satisfactory return rate of around 1.7 percent. Yes, we can believe that some Android handsets are getting returned at a rate nearing 50 percent, but not Android handsets as a whole. The truth is, Apple makes one phone, allowing the company greater quality control over their hardware and user experience. Google licenses Android to handset manufacturers, and some don’t even go so far as to even get official support from the company behind the platform. Half-baked user interfaces built on top of some Android handsets might rightfully detract from a user’s view of their new handset. Still, if we could get some hard numbers we’d be willing to bet that handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S II (which sold 3 million units in 55 days), HTC EVO 3D, and others of that caliber would sport return rates much lower than 30 to 40 percent (it’s true that at one point the Motorola Droid 2 held the lowest return rate of all handsets in Verizon’s lineup).
So take the reported numbers as you will, but we suspect that the supposedly high rate of return on a small portion of devices won’t greatly affect Android’s global figures. We’re just not buying it.
[via TechCrunch]