40% of Android phones are returned? ‘Absolutely ridiculous’

By on Jul 28, 2011 at 1:30 PM
Featured July 28, 2011

TechCrunch on Wednesday published a report claiming to reveal “Android’s dirty secret,” and quite a secret it was. According to the report, which cited a person familiar with handset sales for multiple manufacturers, between 30% and 40% of many Android handsets are returned by consumers. “Plainly put, these figures are absolutely ridiculous,” a source told BGR. We spoke to multiple well-placed sources following the publication of that story, but in reality we didn’t have to know the claim was ridiculous. If return rates were in fact “approaching 40%” as the report suggests, vendors wouldn’t just be bailing on Android, they would be going out of business. Handset returns are a huge deal in the wireless industry because every single device returned by a customer costs the manufacturer money. It also costs the carrier money in the event the device was sold through a carrier, and it costs the third-party retailer money if the device was sold through a third-party retailer. Read on to find out how many Android devices are really being returned.

Earlier this month, Google revealed that Android activations have reached 550,000 devices per day on average. While this figure does not directly correlate with Android handset sales, we can use it to get a pretty good idea of how many Android phones are being sold these days. There are some great Android tablets out there and Google TV is nifty, but smartphones easily make up the lion’s share of those activations. Conservatively, let’s say 90%. So that means about 14.85 million Android smartphones are sold each month. If “many” of those phones were returned, it would spell huge trouble for manufacturers. Assuming each return costs the manufacturer $50 — which, according to two of our sources, is a very low estimate — that means Android handset return rates of 30% to 40% would cost vendors hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars each year. Outlandish.

So what’s the real number? It’s tough for us to give an across-the-board estimate, of course, but that’s why we have sources. We have been told by three very reliable sources that a safe estimate for Android’s global handset return rate is “in the low single digits.” That’s a pretty far cry from 30% or 40%, we’d say. Of course not all phones are created equal and two sources did mention that some manufacturer bungles have resulted in higher return rates for individual smartphones. By “higher,” we’re talking teens… not 40% or even 30%.

It’s entirely possible that the source of TechCrunch’s story misspoke. Perhaps he or she was referring to the return rate of Android phones in a single retail shop. To think that 40% of many Android handsets are returned across the board, however, is crazy.

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  • http://profiles.google.com/statsprofessor Jakub Palka

    wow so many itrolls here.

  • Anonymous

    Techcrunch hates Android.  Both platforms have their pluses and minuses.

  • Rev Stang

    C’mon.  99% of everything published on TechCrunch is complete bullshit.  Mikey Arrington is tech’s yellowest of yellow journalism.  This is 2011.  How is there anyone left on the planet that doesn’t know this?

  • Anonymous

    i think because there a new one that come out in 3 weeks

  • Red M

    I bet most of those returns are MOTO or Samsung, both have Sh#t quality.  I’ve always owned HTC phones (winmo and droid) and have never had an issue.  

    Mind you, I have a friend who sat on his Galaxy S and then blamed Android for shitty quality :)  

    I’m no fanboy, I like quality, and so far, only HTC phones have the quality……so SUCK IT! hahahaha

  • Banofbros

    After reading the Droid forums, I’d say MOST of those 40% were Thunderbolts…..if you count all the returned defective phones. Some people say they have gone through as many as 5 phones trying to get one that worked…..and they STILL had to wait MONTHS to get updates to “fix” SOME of the other problems that have plagued this phone. AND THEY ARE STILL WAITING for yet ONE MORE upgrade to fix the REMAINING problems.

  • Seymour

    You completely misrepresented the article on Techcrunch.   They said that SOME android devices, they never said phones, had a return rate of up to 30-40%.  They did NOT say that ALL android phones or all android devices had such a return rate. Your indignation and name calling seem misplaced.

  • Anonymous

    you shouldn’t be writing stupid blog posts if you don’t have hard numbers to back it up. SO STFU

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Scardal-Xedcba/100001200511452 Scardal Xedcba

    Yeah, apple is really frightened about the success of android. And what do they do, they start to slander about the quality of android phones:-) I have now my second samsung android phone, and they are just superb! And for what I know from friends having HTC android phone I here exactly the same. And these two brand sell about 80% of a android phones. Apple can not stop the train, what ever they try. People decide in the end, and already decided the direction where it goes.

    • http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/ BoyRetardedReport

      hahaha thats why iOS is the top of the market share as the #1 OS

      Android is LAGGY, crashes too often, and STUPID

  • who cares

    fine 

    all these people bashing android 

    at least us android people are not tied to a company that offers 1 ios and 1 phone 

    and then they want to sue the world because they claim there patents were infringed upon for every invention there is when in reality there a big corporation that try’s to bully all the other companys with these law suits

    multi-touch apple sued samsung saying they infringed upon that patented technology  and then micro-elam electronics slapped apple with the same law suite because they actually invented mulit-touch apple stole it then had the nerve to fight it in court trying to be the big bully and guess what micro-elam electronics had already patented it way before the iphone was even invented

    long story short apple lost they paid 100 million in damages and this is the only reason why multi-touch is on all phones now

    and for all the apple rag heads out there say what ever you want to this post i will never even come back to this page to see it so vent all you want but no sweat off my nuts im right your wrong i have the facts and apple fans will lie to say what ever they want

    and yes i love android and cant stand thieving apple

  • http://twitter.com/XIPRELAY David

    I sell phones here in RI, ive never once had a android phone returned unless there was something physically wrong with the hardware.

    40% Has GOT to be a gross exaggeration 

  • Anonymous

    Low single digits? BS. Remember, Google is including every single “phone” that has Android as an OS even if it isn’t a smartphone. If it was in the single digits then the manufacturers would be advertising this. I would not be surprised if it was in the 30%-40% range when including ALL “phones” that Google is including in their 500k+ activations a day statistic.

  • Rikkirik

    Google repeatedely claims to activiate 550.000 phones per day on average. Let´s make the math. This means 1.1 million every two days and more than 180 million per year. Comscore this week revealed that the past 12 months 25 million Android phones we´re sold. If 40% of Android phones sold we´re returned this would mean that 108 million are sold. Which still does not add up. Google is not giving clarity about the discrepancy between the amount of phones activated and those sold. So chances are great that Google´s Ceo Schmidt is grossly overstating the amount of phones activated and telling blatant lies.

  • Dave Goddard

    probably way higher than single digits. Everyone i know except one person is unhappy with these phones. I took two back to verizon, and was told that many black berry people come in to get their BB back. The end is near either way. iphone 5 in a few weeks.

  • Dave Goddard

    Might I say “DROID DOSENT” I am tech savvy and used the motorola droid x for 10 days and literally nothing worked as advertised.

  • Anonymous

    *Grandpa tries Bionic*
    *audible sigh*
    *returns to jitterbug*

    40%!

  • Guest

    > Perhaps he was referring to the return rate of Android phones in a single retail shop [is 40%]

    Either way… that’s enough of a reason to stay away from Android phones.

  • lorax1284

    Lots of assumptions. Is this science or fiction?

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