Blackberry or crashberry?

Since Monday, UK users of Blackberry smart phones have been without email, Blackberry Messaging (BBM) and internet browsing has been very ‘hit and miss’ since Monday – the 1oth of October 2011.

For three days now UK Blackberry users have been without their phones primary functions, and now it has spread to the US. Earlier today USA users of Blackberry smart phones have also been complaining of a lack of messaging.

The problem is also thought to be affecting Africa and the Middle East. Basically Blackberry messaging systems seem to have ‘crashed’ right across the world.


Blackberry’s owner (RIM) has said that the initial problem was caused by core and back-up switch failures.

Basically, one of Research In Motion’s back-up systems didn’t do what they were supposed to when something went wrong with the service, resulting in a massive crash! The system is designed to ‘failover’ to a backup system if anything happens. This worked fine in testing, but when Blackberry actually needed it to work, it didn’t.

The Logo of BlackberryMobile phones were only initially designed to call and then text, however smart phones were designed to provide so much more, hence why people who have paid a premium to get one, are not best pleased at the moment.

Blackberry is currently rates the UK’s top smart phone, up there with Google’s Android systems and Apple’s iPhones, so considering it faces such tough it’s very important in terms of the phones future, for Blackberry to sort the issues out pretty soon!

Blackberry have started a section on their website called Service Update, where users can get info on the status of what’s going on with the issue, what Blackberry are doing to get on top of it, and hopefully soon how long it should be until services are running normally again.

So what do you think? Do you have a Blackberry? Are you satisfied with your service? How do you think this will affect Blackberry’s future in the smart phone market?

20 thoughts on “Blackberry or crashberry?

    • Christopher (admin team)

      “Love the title !!” – That’s good to here. It took me a while to think of it actually, it probably could be improved, but it was the best I managed to think of at the time 🙂

      FYI (not that you probably want to know as you don’t own one) the service seems to be running again, but there are still some ‘glitches’ thought to be happening.

  1. I don’t have a Blackberry as I always prefer iPhone over Blackberry. Blackberry need some major changes in the looks and features to capture the market where the competition is very high.

  2. Enjoy your relationships with your customers, have fun with them, surprise and delight them, they will be impressed and more likely to buy from you again.

  3. Well written title!

    Personally, I do system implementation and consultancy for a small to medium scale system. During testing stage, most of the things work fine. In order to ensure that it works fine as well when it actually goes live, they should have schedule a more frequent routine to run the failover. I always advice my customer to have all these routines whether it is database/system backup and restore, failover and even disaster recovery routine. A highly available system should have the five 9’s uptime, 99.999% where it can only afford downtime of around 5 minutes in a year which I think RIM service is not committing to the numbers now.

  4. This crash has happened in the absolute worst timing for RIM. Tons of smart phones have emerged, trying to provide the best possible service and the competition is real tough. RIMs still number one but this will definitely have a dent in the hearts and minds of the people in their market.

  5. I don’t think this is still go0ing to stop people from using blackberry. bb has dedicated following and I think you’re going to see their products around for a long time. especially with the new surge of Android tablets, I think BB has an opportunity to make a stand in the tablet market as well!

    • Christopher (admin team)

      Blackberry does have fierce competition though Jarod, and another similar incident, could potentially see the death of Blackberry…

      Thanks for your comment, welcome to the community 🙂
      Christopher – Admin Team

      • Thanks! It’s good to be here… I’ve been reading your blogs for the last hour or so! Great work. Anyhow, back to the point, sadly enough I think Android is actually going to have this market cornered within the next few years. Especially now that Steve Jobs has died, I figure his cult following will start to lose some steam as well- But of course at the end of it all, these are just my opinions =)

        • Christopher (admin team)

          Interesting ideas Jarod 🙂

          Good to here you like the blog, we have over 25 fantastic writers writing about the latest and greatest tech, science, blogging etc. stuff, pretty much every day!

          Great to have you here 🙂

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