Skip to main content
BBC NEWS / BUSINESS
Graphics VersionBBC Sport Home
News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle East | South Asia | UK | Business | Health | Science & Environment | Technology | Entertainment | Also in the news | Have Your Say |
Business Contents:  Your Money | Economy Companies

Friday, 20 April 2007, 08:39 GMT 09:39 UK

Blackberry reveals failure cause

Blackberry mobile device The maker of the Blackberry wireless e-mail device says an insufficiently tested software upgrade was the cause of this week's network failure.

Blackberry's US and North American users lost their service on Tuesday and Wednesday as a result of the problem.

Research In Motion (RIM) said it was now looking to improve its testing and recovery processes to prevent such an outage happening again.

There are about eight million Blackberry users around the world.

'Below expectations'

Blackberry said in a statement that the failure was trigged by "the introduction of a new, non-critical system routine" designed to increase the system's e-mail holding space.

It admitted that "the pre-testing of the system routine proved to be insufficient".

"So long as RIM solves whatever went wrong and communicates it well enough to customers, we foresee no lasting impact"
Analyst Chris Umiastowski

RIM added that the process designed to maintain the service in the event of a failure "did not fully perform to its expectations", causing a longer delay before the system was restored.

Analysts said they did not expect the outage to affect the Blackberry's popularity.

"So long as RIM solves whatever went wrong and communicates it well enough to customers, we foresee no lasting impact," said D Newcrest analyst Chris Umiastowski.

It is estimated that RIM has around 45% of the market for smart phones.

Preliminary figures recently showed that the firm's profits jumped tenfold to $187m (£94m) in the three months to 3 March.

The network disruption comes as RIM faces a formal probe by the US financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission, over its stock options.



E-mail this to a friend
Related to this story:
Blackberry says system restored (18 Apr 07 |  Business )
Customers boost Blackberry maker (12 Apr 07 |  Business )
Blackberry maker settles lawsuit (09 Feb 07 |  Business )
RIM boosted by Blackberry demand (21 Dec 06 |  Business )
Strong profits boost Blackberry (29 Sep 06 |  Business )
Blackberry users stay connected (06 Mar 06 |  Business )

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
RIM
Blackberry
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites



SEARCH BBC NEWS: 

News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle East | South Asia | UK | Business | Health | Science & Environment | Technology | Entertainment | Also in the news | Have Your Say |
Business Contents:  Your Money | Economy Companies

NewsWatch | Notes | Contact us | About BBC News | Profiles | History

^ Back to top | BBC Sport Home | BBC Homepage | Contact us | Help | ©