Mobile Device Failure Rates Highest in Asia

Last year, smartphone shipments hit record levels, up 10.1 percent in 2015 to an impressive 1.3 billion units worldwide. What’s more, 20 percent of the world’s population received new smartphones last year, which means 20 percent of the world’s population got rid of their old phones, for one reason or another. 

Blancco Technology Group recently published its quarterly trend report, and one of the fascinating details outlined in the research was the way different cultures used the same technology to achieve different ends. One finding involved the way human behavior in Asia influenced the failure rates of smartphone devices, which may be linked to the number of replacement devices we saw in 2015. 

What Went Wrong? 

Throughout the world, there are five primary issues that caused device failures; user behavior plays an important role in how we interpret this data. The top five issues included trouble with the camera, touchscreen, battery charging, microphone, and speed/performance of the device. These issues affect both Android and iOS users. 

In Asia, these device issues have a unique spread, with speed and performance ranking the highest, followed by camera, then battery charging, during Q4 of 2015.

Device failure rates are the highest in Asia. Of all the devices returned, or sent to the manufacture for repairs, 50 percent of the devices were returned ‘NTF’, or No Trouble Found. But what does that mean exactly? Why are so many phones having issues in Asia, but when customer service representatives or repair specialists review the device, there’s nothing wrong with it?

Mobile Cultural 

This trend could go back to cultural differences in the way people use smartphones. In places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan, mobile users frequently use messaging apps like WhatsApp and WeChat to communicate socially, even professionally. In some instances, large numbers of users may be communicating simultaneously in a single group chat or bulk text messaging, which can greatly reduce the battery life of the phone, as well as slow down the overall performance. 

Similarly, leaving popular social networking applications open, which regularly cache and store user data, can be extremely draining to battery life, limiting other resources on the device. This makes accessing email and other important functions more difficult, resulting in issues for the user. 

These are not hardware-related problems. In fact, Blancco’s report suggests that human error plays a large role in the number of issues being reported by participating countries.  The U.S. and Europe, for example, report their own distinct device issues, many of which can also be linked to human error. 

Why It’s Important

As smartphone use becomes more standardized in our work and professional lives, it’s going to be important for network operators and device manufactures to understand the cultural differences that affect the overall performance of a phone, depending on the country it’s shipped to. This is also important for businesses that have adopted the BYOD (bring your own device) ideology in the workplace, where device failures can have a serious impact on a businesses’ bottom lines. 

Education will play a large role in lowering the excessive cost of device issues for manufactures and repairs specialists alike. Teaching a user how to keep a phone in good working order will ultimately save everyone time and resources.