75% of M’sians using damaged smartphones

KUALA LUMPUR: Threequarters of smartphone users in Malaysia are currently using damaged smartphones, making the country the second-highest in the Asia Pacific with such users, a study has shown.

US-based mobile device protection company OtterBox said its survey titled “The State of Our Smartphones” revealed that 75 per cent of Malaysians damaged their smartphones over 2.8 times in the past five years, with the damage ranging from minor scratches to screen cracks and water damage.

“One third of Malaysians are likely to have damaged their smartphone within three months of owning it,” OtterBox said in a statement yesterday.

The survey, conducted in August 2015, showed that Hong Kong has the highest percentage of users in the Asia-Pacific region using damaged smartphones, with 83 per cent having damaged their smartphones over 3.3 times in the past five years, followed by Malaysia at 75 per cent, Singapore at 65 per cent and Taiwan at 63 per cent.

Malaysia has one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates in the world at 140 per cent with 10 million smartphone users, said OtterBox.

According to the survey, 68 per cent of Malaysians were not bothered by cracked smartphone screens as long as the damage did not affect the phone’s performance.

About a fifth, or 21 per cent, of Malaysian smartphone users said their phones were “badly damaged”, while 24 per cent cited high repair costs at an average of RM500 were keeping them from fixing their phones.

OtterBox further said that 20 per cent of respondents in the survey admitted to not having any form of protection on their phones when the damage occurred. - Bernama