[NewsPoster]

A new reliability report from Rescuecom shows Apple placing in second place, beaten by Samsung by a wide margin. The new report for the first quarter of 2013, which now takes into account tablets as well as computers, also puts Apple ahead of Lenovo, Asus, Toshiba, HP, Dell, and Acer, with both Sony and Panasonic dropping out of the rankings entirely.

Statistics provided by Rescuecom put Apple as having 26.2-percent of the market share, when taking into account sales of the iPad, giving it almost a 12-percent lead on its nearest competitor, HP. The percentage of service calls to Rescuecom for Apple issues was 11 percent, the fifth highest of the eight companies listed. In comparison, Samsung is listed, according to the IDC-sourced numbers, as taking up 9.4-percent of shipped devices in the quarter, while Samsung support calls for the period reached 0.8 percent. By Rescuecom's Computer Reliability Score system, Samsung with 1,170 beats Apple's 237.

The figures are a departure from previous Rescuecom reports, due to the inclusion of tablets. CEO David Milman said "Much like the shift from PC desktops to laptops, a shift is happening from PCs to mobile computing, including tablets," citing a shift in calls from computer support to tablet support.

A previous reliability report for the entirety of last year, which covers computers and notebooks without factoring in tablet support, places Apple sixth in the rankings with its 9.7-percent shipment share and 12.7-percent share of support calls. Current leader Samsung also topped that chart, though with a smaller 4.3-percent share of the market and 0.7-percent call volume.

[Gazoobee]

The only reason this is interesting at all is because it shows in certain markets and certain situations, Rescuecom's information is entirely misleading and non-indicative of the facts on the ground. If I worked at Rescuecom I would use this report as evidence of a need to change the entire methodology of their analysis.

[Spheric Harlot]

That's what they wrote, too.

[rocwurst]

Of course a more likely explanation is that IDC has grossly inflated Samsung's marketshare.

This would not be surprising considering these are the analysts who infamously reported that Samsung had sold 2.5 million tablets worldwide in Q3 2012 only to have court-ordered figures from Samsung demonstrate they had only sold a miniscule 37,000 tablets in the USA.

Note that the USA at the time was the nation with by far the largest number of active Android and iOS devices in the world (greater than the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th nations put together).

[Eldernorm]

When you use shipping hardware numbers vs actual sales of items you know you cannot take a report seriously.
Apple products also show a 3-4 times greater use on the internet so I would expect a much higher question on operation focus than on equipment I just use for local gaming.

ifixit survey said that Apple iPhone was 3x more reliable than Samsung vs their repair numbers. Hardware repair not call in tech support. Just saying.

[Charles Martin]

Since Samsung doesn't make significant numbers of desktops and notebooks, it strikes me that for the purposes of this particular study ONLY their tablets are being counted. Tablets being generally much more reliable than traditional computers, if my theory is true then the results would naturally skew towards Samsung and against all the other companies that make more than just tablets.

It would be more informative, I think, to just compare tablets as a class separate from notebooks/desktops. Samsung might also win that contest for all I know, but I suspect the results would be quite different.

[Flying Meat]

Rescue.com is the Onion of tech reports.

[ljmac]

It is blatantly obvious that the reason for this discrepancy is that PCs require far more support than tablets; you have to compare like with like.