Android Phones and Tablets Being Returned En Masse?

In a TechCrunch story Tuesday, it was reported that Android's activation numbers may be misleading.

During Google's earnings call on July 14, it was revealed that 550,000 android devices were being activated every day. However, the article states that 30-40% of all activated android devices are being returned.

When accounted for, that would mean that really only 330,000 to 385,000 devices are truly being activated each day. With Apple selling 33 million iOS devices in the last quarter, that would put them at around 366,000 iOS device activations a day.

Even when subtracting the 1% of returns that Apple says it gets on iOS devices, Apple would still be activating 362,000 iOS devices a day.

Steve Jobs on multiple occasions has criticized Google for counting upgrades as activations, implying that Google was in some way cooking the numbers.

Android, while loved by manufactures, open-source loving techies and mobile providers for its flexibility, may not be so loved by consumers, it seems. The OS is viewed as hard to use or buggy, with a return rate approaching 40% in many cases, according to TechCrunch.