It was the biggest outage in years for BlackBerry users, and strained their relationship with an already tarnished brand. It came on the eve of the launch of a mighty competitor _ a new iPhone model.
Research In Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that makes the phones, said a crucial link in its European infrastructure failed Monday, and a backup didn’t work either. The underlying problem has been fixed, but a backlog of emails and messages has built up that the company has yet to work down.
Meanwhile, emails and messages from other regions to Europe were piling up in RIM’s systems in the rest of the world, like letters clogging a mailbox. That caused the outages in the U.S. and Asia, said David Yach, RIM’s chief technology officer for software.
At Zenprise Inc., a Fremont, California, firm that helps companies manage BlackBerrys issued to employees, vice president Ahmed Datoo said emails started piling up on U.S. servers shortly after midnight. By morning, the congestion was heavy enough at a particular client company to delay all email for BlackBerrys. The pileup started to ease in the afternoon.
RIM is already struggling with delays in getting new phones out, a tablet that’s been a dud and shares that are approaching a five-year low. In the latest quarter, it sold 10.6 million phones, down from 12.1 million the same period last year.
The duration of the latest outage could force large businesses to rethink their use of BlackBerrys, said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi. Many of them have stuck with the phones because of the quality and efficiency of its email system, but that’s now in question, she said.
Consumers are having second thoughts too. Andrew Mills, a child abuse investigator for the state of Arkansas, said he’d been thinking of getting some other smartphone for a while, and the outage was the “nail in the coffin” for him.
The 27-year-old has used BlackBerrys for five years, but friends and family have abandoned them, and he’s set to do so in a few weeks. “From what I can see on their new phones they’re not doing anything that’s competing with Droid and iPhone,” he said.
In the United Arab Emirates, the two biggest phone companies said they would compensate their BlackBerry users for the mishap by giving them at least three days of free service. Matthew Willsher, chief marketing officer for Etisalat, the country’s biggest telecom, said it was acting in response to the “exceptional and unprecedented circumstances.”
Unlike other cellphone makers, RIM handles email and messaging traffic to and from its phones. That allows it to provide services that other phones don’t have, optimize data service and provide top-class security. But when it encounters a problem, a large share of the 70 million BlackBerry subscribers worldwide can be affected all at once. BlackBerry outages tend to occur several times a year, but they usually last for less than a day.
In a letter on RIM’s website Robin Bienfait, RIM’s chief information officer, apologized for service interruptions and delays. He said email systems are operating around the world and they are continuing to clear any backlogged messages.
“You’ve depended on us for reliable, real-time communications, and right now we’re letting you down,” Bienfait said. “We believe we understand why this happened and we are working to restore normal service levels in all markets as quickly as we can.”
One of the BlackBerry’s big attractions is the BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, which works like text messaging but doesn’t incur extra fees. That service was affected by the outage, and to make matters worse for RIM, Apple Inc. is releasing software Wednesday for its iPhones that works like BBM. The iPhone 4S will be released on Friday. Competition from Apple is one of the chief causes of RIM’s diminishing fortunes.
RIM shares fell 53 cents, or 2.2 percent, to close New York trading at $23.88 as major indexes rose. The shares hit $19.29 a week ago, the lowest level since 2006.
<한글 기사>
블랙베리 먹통사태 사흘째…미주지역까지 확대
리서치 인 모션(RIM) 블랙베리의 각종 서비스가 사흘째 제대로 이뤄지지 않고 있다고 CNN 등 미국 언론들이 12일(이하 현지시간) 보도했다.
오히려 서비스 차질 지역이 미주지역으로 확대되고 있으며, 트위터 등 소셜미디 어 등에서는 고객들의 불만이 쏟아지고 있다.
RIM은 이날 보도자료를 통해 "미주지역 블랙베리 가입자들은 오늘 아침에 간헐적으로 서비스 지연 현상을 경험할 수 있다"면서 "빠른 시일 내 문제를 해결하기 위 해 노력하고 있으며, 고객들의 불편에 사과한다"고 말했다.
이 같은 먹통사태는 지난 10일 중동과 유럽, 아프리카 지역에서 발생한 뒤 11일 에는 남미, 12일에는 미국과 캐나다로 확산되고 있으며, 1차적으로 문자메시지와 인 터넷 접속이 되지 않고 일부 지역에서는 통화도 제대로 이뤄지지 않고 있다.
RIM은 현재 서비스 차질을 빚고 있는 고객의 규모 등에 대해 공개하지 않고 있지만 이번 사태로 고통받는 이용자의 수가 수백만명은 될 것으로 추산되고 있다. 전 세계적으로 블랙베리 가입자는 7천만명 정도이다.
이 같은 먹통사태가 이번이 처음은 아니지만 RIM의 입장에서는 이번 사태가 최근 치열한 생존경쟁이 벌어지는 스마트폰 시장에서 고전을 면치 못하는 가운데 나온 것이어서 매출이나 향후 경영에 타격이 우려된다.
IT전문 애널리스트 제프 카건은 "RIM의 현 사태는 최근에 발생한 것 가운데 가장 큰 규모"라며 "고객들의 인내가 점차 분노로 바뀌고 있어 이들 가운데 아이폰이 나 안드로이드폰으로 갈아타는 이용자들이 나타날 수도 있다"고 말했다.
