Text, Email Backlog Blamed for BlackBerry Outage

Balsillie, Lazaridis insist it had nothing to do with investor pressure

(NEWSER) - A big shuffle at Research in Motion last night, as Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis—who have served together as co-CEOs for two decades—stepped down, turning over the top position at the struggling company to former chief operating officer Thorsten Heins. Balsillie and Lazaridis also gave up their co-chairmanship, and the board named current board member Barbara Stymiest the new chair. Company co-founder Lazaridis will serve as vice chair, and Balsillie will remain a board member; the two remain directors and significant shareholders, the Wall Street Journal reports. More»

Company will hand out at least 12 premium apps in apology move

(NEWSER) - In an attempt to appease the tens of millions of angry customers who were affected by the days-long BlackBerry outage last week, Research In Motion is handing out $100 worth of free premium apps starting Wednesday. "We’ve worked hard to earn [customers’] trust over the past 12 years and we’re committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect,” says the company’s co-CEO in a statement. “We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again." But the expensive solution may not be enough to earn back the trust of corporate customers, Reuters notes. More»

Millions in Europe, Middle East, Africa, India, and more lose service

(NEWSER) - BlackBerry's epic service outage finally struck North America today, as users in the US and Canada lost access to various communication services. Today is the third straight day of outages, which began in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India, Reuters reports. RIM blamed the problem on a core switch failure within its infrastructure. The company thought it had fixed the problem yesterday, but later admitted that it hadn't—and that outages had actually spread to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. More»

But will it be enough to save Research in Motion?

(NEWSER) - Research in Motion rolled out three long-delayed new BlackBerry devices today that it hopes will stem its slide toward irrelevancy. All three devices run on the BlackBerry 7 OS, and all sport touch screens. The flashiest offering may be the Torch 9850/9860, RIM’s first all-touch screen BlackBerry, but there’s also the Torch 9810, which features a slide-out keyboard, and the Bold 9900 Series, which is the slimmest phone yet to boast BlackBerry’s trademark keyboard, ZDNET reports. More»

RIM dominates in sales, but the iPhone has big advantages

(NEWSER) - The iPhone has become a cultural phenomenon, but RIM sells way more units than Apple does. Why, then, does the BlackBerry have such obvious flaws? Wired lists five improvements RIM needs to make:

1. Browser. The web looks much the same on an iPhone or Palm Pre as it does on a PC. But the BlackBerry presents a bare-bones mobile version of most websites—and is slow, to boot.
2. Touchscreen. The BlackBerry Storm's "clickable" screen was supposed to feel like a real keypad, but it just made typing slower.