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Samsung's revenue and profit may be up, but so is the return rate for its Galaxy Tab.
According to ITG Investment Research, which tracked sale data from 6,000 wireless stores in the U.S., an estimated 13 percent of Galaxy Tab owners are returning the devices. The data was tracked from the device's release in November until the end of December, according to AllThingsD.com.
The news doesn't get any better for Samsung as holiday returns continue to come in. According to the data, if you factor in cumulative data until January 15, the return rate jumps to 16 percent.
In comparison, Apple's iPad had a 2 percent return rate for the same time period, according to the New York Post.
This should give you a bit more perspective about the subject. Also do not forget that return rate is not failure rate. It includes all returns for whatever reason, including those who buy online and then buy in a store.
Now look at this failure rate for laptops from 2009.
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Shoppers and list-makers may be interested to learn that Asus and Toshiba notebooks had three-year failure rates below 16 percent. Sony placed third, with a 16.8 percent three-year failure rate, followed by Apple (17.4 percent),
Dell (18.3 percent) and Lenovo (21.5). Acer and Gateway came in just under 24 percent, and Hewlett-Packard, which is the world’s largest producer of PCs, came in last, with a 25.6 percent failure rate over three years.
The problem with these quotes is that the companies are not good at divulging such information, and there is debate about how this plays out on the global market. For example, Samsung says they shipped 2 million Tabs, but will not comment on how many sold. There is also a cryptic statement that the return rate was only on the units sold in the US, which is only 18% of the total. However, in many countries, there is no return policy. You buy it, you own it. So if they cannot return something that fails, how can that count?