TORONTO — The second BlackBerry failure in less than a week disrupted service Wednesday for millions of users on two continents.
When the problems began Tuesday night, Twitter and other online forums were peppered with laments about the failure of the gadget.
“If my BlackBerry is down, everything is down,” said Sarah Whalen, 22, of New York. She said her BlackBerry did not resume working until Wednesday afternoon.
The company behind the service, Canada’s Research in Motion Ltd., blamed a software upgrade for the problem, which it said was confined to North and South America.
Research in Motion said BlackBerry users couldn’t send or receive e-mails and instant messages. Many users also found the Internet inaccessible, though many could still make phone calls. Research in Motion would not say how long the failure lasted or exactly how many users were affected.
The glitch comes after another failure last Thursday and at least three breakdowns in 2008. The latest problems are happening at an especially bad time for Research in Motion, which is facing tougher competition than ever before in the market it helped pioneer.
“One of [Research in Motion’s] big advantages is that it’s perceived as a reliable device,” said Duncan Stewart, director of research and analysis at DSam Consulting. “To lose the advantage of reliability would, in fact, be a very big deal for this company.”
In Toronto, Corey Marshall, 23, said he bases most of his social life on his Black-Berry, using the phone’s messaging services to keep in touch with many of his friends. When the services went down, he had no way to contact them because he had never exchanged phone numbers.
“I was literally talking to six people over BlackBerry Messenger and all of a sudden nobody was replying,” Marshall said. “I kept unplugging my phone, turning it off and on. I was getting very upset when it wouldn’t work.”
Research in Motion has sold more than 75 million BlackBerrys since the gadget debuted 10 years ago. It nowcounts 36 million subscribers around the globe and ranks second in the worldwide market for advanced “smart phones,” with a 21 percent share, behind Nokia Corp.’s 39 percent, according to market research firm Gartner Inc.
BlackBerrys are especially popular in occupations heavily dependent on messaging - among lawyers and business executives, for instance. Research in Motion counts 500,000 subscribers in the U.S. government. President Barack Obama has been a BlackBerry devotee.
After originally focusing on corporate or government customers, Research in Motion now gets most of its new subscribers in the consumer market, thanks to touch-screen models like the BlackBerry Storm.
But Research in Motionfaces innovative competitors such as Apple’s iPhone, which had 17 percent of the smartphone market in the Gartner report, and the brand-new Motorola Droid. Research in Motion’s stock has dropped 23 percent since September.
The iPhone is beloved for its design cachet and the seemingly limitless supply of programs, known as “apps,” that users can download to customize their phones. BlackBerrys got apps later, and have fewer available.
Yet the iPhone also has not been as reliable as many users would like. AT&T, the sole carrier of the device in the U.S., has been upgrading its network to reduce the dropped connections and long waits people have encountered when trying to run programs.
Although BlackBerry service is sold by wireless carriers, Research in Motion manages its messaging network itself. The centralized structure means that any problems can affect millions of users.
This week’s failure apparently stemmed from a flaw in recently released versions of Research in Motion’s instant messaging software, known as BlackBerry Messenger. Research in Motion released a new version Wednesday that solves the problem.
Research in Motion, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, apologized for any inconvenience. The company declined interview requests.
Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Vanacore of The Associated Press.
Business, Pages 22 on 12/24/2009