Blackberry users suffer outages
Twice in the last week, millions of RIM Blackberry users worldwide suffered through complete email and text service outages, leaving the normally well-connected smartphone users high and dry.
On two days, Tuesday and Wednesday, social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk were rife with comments from users that were unable to use their highly prized RIM smartphones. Apparently, the underlying problem was with a software upgrade, according to Canadian company Research in Motion, manufacturers of the Blackberry devices, according to an AP story.
Research In Motion (RIM), and thousands of vocal users on the Web, said that BlackBerries were unable to either send or receive e-mails and instant messages, although they did not not lose their telephone services. Many users also found that they were not able to access the Internet. RIM said the service losses began around 1:45 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, got worse around 6:30 p.m. and were getting better by around 11:30 p.m. Service appeared restored by Wednesday afternoon. RIM would not disclose exactly how many subscribers were affected. This event followed a similar problem last Thursday.
Worse, these two service outages come after several similar outages earlier in the year, which is hard on the Blackberry image of reliability. The company has built much of its reputation, and leadership in the corporate smartphone wars, on security and reliability. Should either of those legs begin to fold up, RIM could have a problem on their hands. Duncan Stewart, director of research and analysis at DSam Consulting, agrees. Stewart has said, “One of RIM’s big advantages is that it’s perceived as a reliable device. To lose the advantage of reliability would, in fact, be a very big deal for this company.”
It would pay to keep an eye on the problems experienced by RIM with peripheral Blackberry services. The company is already very slowly losing ground to other, newer smartphones like the iPhone and various Android handsets. Issues like these with reliability could accelerate those losses over the last year or so and put the Blackberry smartphone lead in jeopardy.
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