RIM president and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis has defended BlackBerrys against accusations that the devices are less reliable than iPhones.

Recent research from warranty provider SquareTrade suggested that BlackBerrys had an 11.9% failure rate within the first year, compared to just 5.6% of iPhones.

The study examined customer-reported data on over 15,000 phones and focused on malfunctions through normal usage, rather than accidental damage.

“You have to keep in mind that [SquareTrade] is not a consultancy; these guys sell extra warranties, so you have to be careful,” Lazaridis said in a CBR interview.

Lazaridis was also critical of the method used to gather the data: “The way they got the research [was to look at] how many people took out extended warranties. You have to be careful with that because the population of BlackBerrys is much older and larger, so the sample spaces aren’t representative,” Lazaridis said. “BlackBerrys have built their reputation on quality and reliability.”

Lazaridis also defended the decision to release the BlackBerry Storm without Wi-Fi, limiting users to a 3G connection. “We tried,” he said. “When you’re engineering something, you try to get as much as you can into the product, and we just couldn’t [add Wi-Fi].”

He said that the decision came down to a question of space. “We have 3D tools that allow us to pack every available millimetre. There’s no room left. The speaker is here, the antenna radiation field is there, then you have the camera, the flash, the microphone, the head set, there’s just no room left in there,” he said.

Lazaridis believes that people won’t be put off, despite the decision receiving criticism from some quarters: “3G coverage is pretty ubiquitous and I think that it runs really fast. Think of it this way: Many of us buy a device like this and just expect it to work everywhere. Even people with Wi-Fi don’t always set it up to work in their home, or business. You still need the 3G connection to make phone calls. You still need it to get your SMS and MMS.”

“We went after those things that people needed: high quality camera, flash, multimedia support, big screen, small size, big battery,” Lazaridis said.