Southwest said it made a major push to improve its on-time reliability in the second half of 2011.

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While Apple maintained the top spot for the ninth time in a row through US customers' happiness with the hardware design and ease of use, most of its major competitors made big strides in reliability, speed and camera quality in the past half-year -- to the point where there was a virtual dead heat for second place between HTC, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung.

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"We've had a challenging season trying to get reliability sorted but we've had a stronger second half, " Wirth said.

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