PC service and repair firm Rescuecom has announced that HP has been ranked number one in its annual reliability report, bumping perennial champion Apple off the top spot.
Based on the number of calls that the firm received to its call centre and the manufacturer's PC market share in the US, Rescuecom is able to come up with a score that it claims is representative of out-of-warranty reliability.
HP - and subsidiary Compaq - received a score of 346, based on a market share of 25 per cent and a call share of 7.2 per cent. This was almost double runners up Apple and Lenovo's scores of 179 and 177, respectively. Rounding out the top five were 2009 champion ASUS with 144 and Toshiba with 96. Dell, which has a similar market share to HP, failed to make its way into the top five.
| Manufacturer | U.S. Computer Market Share | RESCUECOM Computer Repair Shares | Computer Reliability Score |
| HP/COMPAQ | 25.0% | 7.2% | 346 |
| APPLE | 8.8% | 4.9% | 179 |
| IBM/LENOVO | 4.8% | 2.7% | 177 |
| ASUS | 3.5% | 2.4% | 144 |
| TOSHIBA | 8.4% | 8.8% | 96 |
These results are only unusual because HP is normally ranked fairly low on reliability and has been stuck in fifth place in this table for the past few years. Apple, on the other hand, usually leads by quite a significant margin. It's also interesting that ASUS shot from relative obscurity to take the second place in last years chart, only to slip back a bit this year.
Of course, the numbers themselves should be taken with a pinch of salt. The survey assumes that the 20,000 support calls surveyed - and Rescuecom's wider customer base - accurately represent the market share in the wider US and that the reasons for the calls are problems with the systems, not just user errors.
