The data comes from a study by SquareTrade, a third-party warranty and service company. They say that in the first year of ownership, the iPhone has a 5.6% malfunction rate, half the rate of the BlackBerry and one-third the rate of the Treo.

We run our own annual Service & Reliability study, and we found slightly different results. According to our survey, the iPhone is indeed more reliable than the Blackberry, but only on carriers other than AT&T.

Here's the data. For AT&T users, 14% of iPhone owners needed repairs in our most recent study. Only 8% of BlackBerry owners with AT&T needed repair.

But oddly, BlackBerry devices on other carriers needed repairs more often. On T-Mobile, BlackBerries needed repair 15% of the time. On Verizon, 17% of the time.

Both iPhones and BlackBerries were consistently more reliable than Palm Treos, though. Treos needed repair 15% of the time on AT&T, 20% of the time on Verizon and a shocking 24% of the time on Sprint.

You can compare the data yourself by reading SquareTrade's study and our own Service & Reliability page.