Go To Latest Video ReviewsiPhone Most Popular US Handset & Most Reliable
| Author | Gordon Kelly |
| Published | 10th Nov 2008 |
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In about the best possible news Apple could have anticipated today the iPhone 3G has officially become the most popular handset in the US and has also been independently judged as far the most reliable.
Dealing with those sales figures first, the iPhone 3G has finally toppled the horrible, awful, godforsaken Motorola RAZR to become the top selling mobile phone (not just smartphone) among our newly enlightened Yankee compatriots (let's just keep stoking those comments!). Amazingly the RAZR had been the top model for the previous 12 quarters.
"The displacement of the RAZR by the iPhone 3G represents a watershed shift in handset design from fashion to fashionable functionality," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for NPD - who conducted the research. "Four of the five best-selling handsets in the third quarter were optimized for messaging and other advanced Internet features."
Interestingly, that top five in full is the iPhone 3G then all models of the RAZR V3 (that's a lot of variants), BlackBerry Curve (again, all models), LG Rumour and LG enV2.
Secondly, in a separate report independent warranty seller SquareTrade has proclaimed the original iPhone to be the most reliable smartphone with a failure rate of just 5.6 per cent in the first 12 months of ownership. By comparison BlackBerry handsets failed at a rate of 12 per cent (more than double) and Palm's at 16 per cent.
This lead is also predicted to hold steady at two years with SquareTrade projecting an iPhone failure rate to be 9 to 11 per cent (the original isn't yet two years old) while solid data on BlackBerry and Palm Treos have them at 14.3 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.
Funnily enough, all this data comes in spite of the fact the original iPhone was slipperier than a greased weasel and SquareTrade stating 80 per cent of its failures were due to "drops, spills and other accidents". So given the iPhone 3G introduced a rounded, more grip-friendly design could we soon see this rate fall even further?
Apple fans, BlackBerry fans, Windows Mobile fan(s) and Palm fan (there's no need for bracketing the 's' here) - to the comments section with you. And remember: no rabbit punches, no hitting below the belt…
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Ed said on 11th November 2008
Gordon said on 11th November 2008
@jordanwise - methinks we were a touch premature (good thing no one picked up on the Obama reference!)
Keith said on 11th November 2008
@Rsaeire, I'm a software developer so as such I'm pretty techie and have had all sorts of fancy mobiles. The I-Phone certainly is low on feature spec, eg. crap camera et... more
Oliver Levett said on 11th November 2008
The iPhone maybe the best in class, but that's because Apple marketing made a new class so they could say it was the best!
Rsaeire is on the money. Apple have f... more
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While I won't deny you're probably right in many ways, with regards the masses adopting the iPhone, that doesn't change the fact that it is still the best device in ... more