Analyst sticks to BlackBerry Tour return rate report

IDG News Service - The analyst who reported that a high percentage of BlackBerry Tour buyers are returning them because of trackball issues is standing by his research despite strong denials by operators.

Nearly 50% of Tour owners with Sprint wireless service have returned the devices because of a problem that requires users to repeatedly swipe the trackball in order to move the cursor only minimally, David Eller, an analyst at TownHall Research, wrote in a report. Verizon also has a high number of returns, he said.

Many people are complaining about the trackball problems on various online forums, but Sprint says only a "small percentage" of early production Tours had the trackball issue.

Verizon also minimizes the issue. "The Tour is not being returned at a high rate," Jim Gerace, a Verizon spokesman, said. "It has in fact one of the lowest return rates of any device we currently sell."

Verizon caught the problem with the trackball early on and only a "small number" of defective devices made it to customers, Gerace said. He could not specify how many.

Eller says he's confident that his report is accurate and that the statements from the operators conflict with his research. He did not examine all Sprint retail channels but talked to people in the field who reported the high return rates. "Whether or not that's representative of Sprint in its entirety, that's tough to say, but it is happening," he said.

There's no question that Verizon is frustrated about the problem, according to Eller, in part because the majority of smartphones from Verizon come from Research In Motion (RIM), the BlackBerry maker. He expects this situation to spur Verizon to more heavily promote forthcoming phones from Motorola as a way to try to pull back on its reliance on RIM.

Eller did, however, want to correct an error in his original report. The report stated that some returns were due to problems with the touch screen on the Tour. However, the Tour doesn't have a touch screen. Eller said that line was added by someone else or incorrectly edited after he authored the report.

By Thursday afternoon, RIM had not replied to a request for comment made on Wednesday morning.