DragBerry?

Well,its a relief to know it wasnt the ghost of Steve Jobs. It was a core switch failure within the Research in Motion RIM infrastructure. A failover system did not function as previously tested,causing a data backlog that crippled BlackBerry services across continents for a third day. Thats just about all über-secretive RIM would say. Its response is already a classic B-school study in how not to deal with customers: Say as little as possible,ruthlessly control the message from the centre the strategy perfected by Apple. This wasnt BBs first outage,nor was it RIMs first communication paralysis. But it was the biggest ever, and RIM failed again precisely as in past outages no comprehensive disaster recovery solution in either the BIS consumer or BES enterprise service.

The online panic,and jokes in equal measure,reflect the information apocalypse our epoch has conditioned us to dread. When the flow peters out,and suddenly stops altogether,do you hear your heart beat? Forget businesses reporting productivity losses,the BB outage did what the financial crisis or Occupy Wall Street couldnt: it shut down Wall Street. Well,almost. And it came practically hours before the US launch of iPhone 4S,doubly embarrassing a declining brand. RIMs shares have fallen 60 per cent this year,and BB is rapidly losing market to smartphone rivals Android and the iPhone.

The iPhone may have set the smartphone benchmark; but BBs unique services,security and pricing made for loyal customers. Having engineered the original smartphone revolution,and once identified with the besuited banker-type,CrackBerry had come a long popular way before becoming the London rioters weapon of choice. Is RIM now letting the second smartphone revolution relegate BB to the backroom of tech history? One tweet said BlackBerry has marked Steve Jobs death with a 3-day silence. It should be wary of going mute in a fiercely competitive,constantly mutating market.