Obviously, any study is questionable, but not really for those reasons. First, is the iPhone the only one of the three here that is covered by a 1 year manufacturer warranty? If it were, that'd be hilarious, but it's not. All three of these phones are. Now, perhaps the 1 year warranty of RIM and Palm suck compared to Apple and therefore iPhone users may be more inclined to get support from Apple itself, which may skew the data, but I don't think by that much, and besides, wouldn't that just be another kick in the nuts for RIM/Palm?

Second, the fact that there are only 2 models of iPhone has got very little to do with this because they're talking about failure "rates". Maybe some models of Blackberries or Treos have significantly lower failure rates.... but in that case, it would mean that some models have significantly higher failure rates, and, again, that would be bad, rather than good, news for RIM/Palm.

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And the wise consumer buys gadgets with a credit card that has a warranty match feature (paying off the balance the same day). It's not the warranty.

Personally, I think it's the complainant. The Blackberry is more likely to be tied to a business and therefore a business user. If it doesn't work, the user will be pretty steamed and diligent in getting a working model. S/he'll also have greater resources to use in complaining. If my work equipment does not work, I contact IT. IT then does the heavy lifting to replace or repair as part of their duties.

If my iPhone (which my IT department doesn't support) fails, I cannot use a department to do the legwork.

As it stands, my iPhone does not play nice with my job's Exchange server. Evidence tends to indicate it's not the phone and IT is on the verge of closing the ticket. I wound up coming with a half-assed workaround. If this was a Blackberry problem (aside from the problem not existing because the server plays nice with Blackberries), IT would be on it like stink on a pig.

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