Outage turns into outrage as Blackberry's reputation takes a hit

RIM’s global press site has no mention of the outage that started on Monday. The latest release was on Tuesday about the launch of BlackBerry 7 smartphones in Taiwan. RIM India, where the shutdowns of email and messaging services left BlackBerry users with only voice calls and SMS text, does not operate an independent press page.

Besides some brief service updates on another part of the website, one reading "We continue to work on clearing the message backlog in order to eliminate delays. Thank you for your patience", RIM has not done any PR damage control that's specific to Indian users. When reached, RIM representatives referred Campaign to the same service update webpage.

Frustrated netizens have hauled RIM over the coals with caustic jokes and remarks like: "RIM = Rest in misery"; "What did the BlackBerry user say to the other BlackBerry User? Nothing"; and "So the outage is affecting users in 4 continents... South America, Europe, Asia, Africa. Sounds like the service is working just fine in Antarctica though".

Ovum analyst Nick Dillon commented: "Given that the reputation of the BlackBerry service is built upon reliability and timeliness, disruption to its service will undoubtedly impact the perception of the company and its products to a greater extent than its competitors”.

In a video statement posted on RIM's website, co-CEO Mike Lazaridis admitted the company had let its customers down. "It's been my goal to provide reliable realtime communications around," he said. "We did not deliver on that goal this week - not even in close."

One of the most pressing issues faced by RIM is increasing competition from Apple, Android and Windows Phone. According to a survey by Brand Finance, published even before the outage, the BlackBerry brand was worth 24 per cent less in September than in January this year.

First Post, a business blog based in Mumbai, says BlackBerry’s failure to communicate had clearly worsened the brand's image in India. "Say ‘BlackBerry services are down’, not ‘messaging and browsing delays are being experienced,' it advised, adding that consumers need to be told what is wrong "in a language that consumers understand".