In response to a series of questions this morning, RIM replied: “Yesterday, some BlackBerry subscribers in the EMEA region experienced delays with BlackBerry services. The issue was resolved and services are operating normally. We apologise to those customers who were impacted for any inconvenience.”
Despite repeated attempts by ITWeb to garner further facts and clarity on the issue, RIM refused to provide any further details about the problem.
Yesterday, BIS collapsed and was inoperative for much of the day, from about 11am local time. In a generic statement issued by RIM confirming the outage, the company apologised for any inconvenience caused and stated it was “working to resolve an issue currently impacting some BlackBerry subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA)”.
Social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, were flooded with complaints about the BIS failure, as many were unable to browse the Web, use their instant messaging or access Internet services, such as e-mail.
One smartphone user tweeted: “Who wants a centralised service... where if it dies, so does your Internet?” A BlackBerry user stated: “[To my BlackBerry]... your days are numbered.” Another wrote: “Well BlackBerry, today you've not only let me down, you let most of Europe down, but most of all you've let yourself down. No BBM hug for you!”
World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says RIM's apathetic treatment of its customers is “nothing short of objectionable”. The company could learn a thing or two from Seacom, which similarly had an outage on its hands yesterday, he comments.
“While RIM kept millions of users across Africa, Europe and the Middle East in the dark about why their BlackBerry services were not working, Seacom immediately posted a statement on its Web site and informed media and analysts exactly what the problem was with their undersea cable.”
Goldstuck adds that the statement issued by RIM, five hours after “social networks were inundated with complaints, queries and even anguish”, may as well have come from outer space.
“More than five hours after the outage began there was no indication of what had happened, why it happened, how it happened, or when the crisis would be resolved. Their biggest customer crisis in the history of their service to Europe, Middle East and Africa is waved aside as a service issue.
“That such a major outage, affecting an estimated 10 million users, could be addressed so late, with so little information and with so little concern, is not only astonishing, it is an insult to the intelligence of customers.”
He concludes that, when current customers are faced with their next smartphone purchase decision, the events of 10 October and RIM's consequent response, or lack thereof, will “weigh heavily” on their decisions.
With the boom of the smartphone market and the introduction of more recent contenders for market share, the BlackBerry line, introduced in 1999, faces mounting competition and pressure. Reuters reports that the “troubled company” is “fighting to regain market share it is losing to competitors using Google's Android and Apple's iPhone”.
Media reports revealed the company's share price fell 0.56%, to $23.23, yesterday after the outage news, and was down 60% from the beginning of the year.
Goldstuck says the apparent lack of engagement with its customers on the part of RIM is telling of the company's attitude and repute, and does not bode well for its positioning in the market.
“That RIM could issue such statements in the week after Apple had redoubled their challenge to RIM's continued leadership of the corporate smartphone market, is a dereliction of duty by its senior management.”
He adds that the EMEA market is where RIM has experienced its strongest recent growth and has the greatest customer loyalty. “That RIM should be so unconcerned about the EMEA market... is a signal that its top management has lost sight of what makes a company great.”
SOURCE: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48072:rim-hits-mute-button-on-outage&catid=190
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