Telecommunications companies spend billions of dollars for hardware repairs of Android phones every year, a new study says.

The study was done by wireless services company WDS which looked at over 600,000 technical support calls made by consumers to the company’s support team over the course of the past 12 months.

According to WDS, “The return and repair of Android smartphone devices is costing mobile operators as much as USD$2 billion per year”.

That figure is significant given the domination of the Android platform on the smartphone space around the world.

WDS says that the new study found that Android phones had more hardware failures than rival platforms BlackBerry, iOS and Windows Phone 7.

According to the firm, “14% of technical support calls on Android relate to hardware, versus 11% for Windows Phone, 7% for iOS and 6% for BlackBerry OS”.

What might be to blame for this higher hardware problems rate is fragmentation, WDS says.

Nonetheless, WDS Vice President of Marketing Tim Deluca-Smith said that their “analysis does not find any inherent fault with the Android platform. Its openness has enabled the ecosystem to grow to a phenomenal size, at a phenomenal rate, and it’s this success that is proving challenging.”

About Solon Harmony Dolor

A passion for technology and journalism makes this upcoming writer very interested in social media and technology news. Fresh from finishing an English and Journalism degree from the University of the Philippines Diliman, he aims to bring interesting news to our readers .