Do system-wide outages cause customer defections in smartphones? That is a question some are posing regarding Research In Motion (RIMM) this morning.
Last night came an outage in the BlackBerry smartphones after 6:00 p.m. EST. The problem is that this is the second outage in less than a week’s time. Last night’s outage also affected messaging and Internet access for many on top of the email outages. Some are wondering if this is a win for Apple (AAPL) in iPhone and Google (GOOG) in Android smartphones.
Here is the problem in analyzing this outage: The outage was not universal and was not an outright crash of the entire phone. Users might have experienced inconvenience, but due to the timing of the outage and the proximity to the holidays it seems unlikely that businesses can even complain that they missed business as a result.
Research in Motion is not the only provider to ever experience outages. The company has said that it has identified the issue and is working to restore the service. I have personally tested this outage this morning, and there were no issues as emails are going through.
BlackBerry has experienced outages before and probably will experience them again. But look elsewhere. The iPhone is criticized over and over for its AT&T (T) network issues and lack of ample bandwidth in that network. This may have kept some users from buying an iPhone, but it has not at all kept the iPhone from becoming the next and latest eye candy consumer electronics must-have item. Amazon.com (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) have both experienced major outages to their systems, yet these are not hurt at all beyond the initial public relations bash that they take.
Unless BlackBerry suddenly becomes a trouble-ridden smartphone with problems and outages becoming the norm, this will be a non-event. The BlackBerry is to corporate and enterprise business users what Microsoft (MSFT) is to office suite software packages on the corporate and enterprise level. There may be other alternatives, but nothing will happen overnight in that direction. Then consider the IT-department’s work at enterprise and corporate levels just to make the change from a BlackBerry server system to another system. Then add in the cost of making such a change.
It is possible a few new individuals threw the towel in on the BlackBerry service after two outages in a week. Then there is the laziness of humanity, which can always be counted upon. Have you switched from one smartphone to another lately? This can chew up hours and hours of time, which discourages change. The company’s most recent sales data and guidance make this seem almost like noise rather than news.
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