"The Blackberry Death"

Last week, Research in Motion suffered the most severe blackout in the history of the company. For three days, tens of millions of Blackberry users around the world lost communication services on their devices such as email, Blackberry Messenger and internet browsing.

As someone who has never been a fan of Blackberry smartphones, I'm nearly happy when I hear of them failing in such a big way. It baffles me that they are still such a strong contender in the market. I find them to be so user unfriendly and in no way attractive to look at, yet, they currently hold 11.7% of the smartphone market.

There was outrage expressed over the issue on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter as well as pleas for the company to solve the issues as quick as possible. Many users (iPhone users in particular) found the opportunity for some jokes at Blackberry's expense.

Inevitably, this failure on Blackberrys behalf will put an element of doubt in people's minds about the reliability of Blackberry devices. Many companies worldwide give Blackberrys to their employees and when the blackout occurred it slowed many companies' operations. A student at Michigan State University, after the blackout, said "I've been a pretty big Blackberry advocate, but I'm done playing games with you, BlackBerry". She proceeded to go and buy an iPhone even after the service was restored.

Jim Balsillie, one of the company's CEOs said "We're going to fully commit to win that trust back". Personally, I feel that the reliability of Blackberry devices was one of the few competitive advantages that the company possessed over competitors such as the iPhone and after this fiasco, it could be a long uphill battle to restore that trust. The brand name has been tarnished.

This situation has brought about a very negative image for Blackberry. However, this situation has highlighted an extremely important fact which is our dependence, as a society, on devices such as smartphones. The fact that a simple blackout like this can hinder global companies from functioning effectively is a worrying thought. It is an incredible power that communication companies hold.

Maybe companies need to diversify their means of communication? Or maybe, companies such as Blackberry need to be held more accountable when an issue like this occurs? Regardless, issues such as this will happen again and again, and we need to better prepare ourselves in the future.