Editing BlackBerry (section)

=== Service outages ===
At various stages of the company's history it suffered occasional service outages that have been referred to in the media as "embarrassing".<ref>{{cite news |last1=Lashinsky |first1=Adam |date=November 10, 2011 |title=BlackBerry's business problem |url=http://fortune.com/2011/11/10/blackberrys-business-problem/ |work=[[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]] |access-date=January 25, 2018 |quote=Slow browsing, few apps, and an embarrassing service outage. Can BlackBerry recover from its biggest crisis yet?}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |date=October 15, 2011 |title=RIM and its troubles: BlackBerry blues |url=http://www.economist.com/node/21532312 |newspaper=[[The Economist]] |access-date=January 25, 2018 |quote=Research In Motion can ill afford embarrassing service interruptions.}}</ref>

In 2005 the company suffered a relatively short-term outage reportedly among a small handful of North America carriers.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Osborne |first1=Brian |date=June 20, 2005 |title=Limited BlackBerry outage Friday morning |url=https://www.geek.com/blurb/limited-blackberry-outage-friday-morning-559126/ |work=[[Geek.com]] |access-date=January 25, 2018 |archive-date=January 26, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180126125613/https://www.geek.com/blurb/limited-blackberry-outage-friday-morning-559126/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> The service was restored after several hours.

In 2007 the e-mail service suffered an outage which led for calls by some questioning the integrity towards BlackBerry's perceived centralized system.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Jedras |first=Jeff |date=April 18, 2007 |title=BlackBerry outage suggests IT infrastructure weakness |url=https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/blackberry-outage-suggests-it-infrastructure-weakness/10368 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240525072316/https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/blackberry-outage-suggests-it-infrastructure-weakness/10368 |archive-date=May 25, 2024 |access-date=January 25, 2018 |work=ITBusiness.ca }}</ref>

In 2009 the company had an outage reportedly covering the whole of North America.<ref>{{cite news |date=December 23, 2009 |title=BlackBerry users hit by eight-hour outage |url=http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/23/blackberry.outage/index.html |work=ZDNet |access-date=January 25, 2018}}</ref>

At 2011-10-10 10:00 UTC began a multi-day outage in [[Europe, the Middle East and Africa]], affecting millions of BlackBerry users.<ref>{{cite web |last=Williams |first=Christopher |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/blackberry/8818094/BlackBerry-services-collapse.html |title=BlackBerry services collapse |work=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |date=October 10, 2011 |access-date=November 5, 2013}}</ref> There was another outage the following day.<ref>{{cite web |last=Meyer |first=David |url=http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/businessstyling-of-it/2011/10/12/rim-explains-blackberry-downtime-as-outage-spreads-40094166/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130505152321/http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/businessstyling-of-it/2011/10/12/rim-explains-blackberry-downtime-as-outage-spreads-40094166/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=May 5, 2013 |title=RIM explains BlackBerry downtime as outage spreads |website=ZDNet UK |date=October 12, 2011 }}</ref> By October 12, 2011, the BlackBerry Internet Service went down in North America.<ref name="bloomberg1">{{cite news |last=Browning |first=Jonathan |url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-12/blackberry-maker-rim-still-clearing-data-backlog-vodafone-says.html |title=RIM in 'Race Against Clock' as BlackBerry Disruption Spreads |website=Bloomberg |date=October 12, 2011 |access-date=May 31, 2012}}</ref> Research In Motion attributed data overload due to switch failures in their two data centres in [[Waterloo, Ontario|Waterloo]] in Canada and [[Slough]] in England as the cause of the service disruptions.<ref name="bloomberg1"/><ref>{{cite news |author=P.L. |date=October 13, 2011 |title=BlackBerry outage: Another burning platform |url=https://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2011/10/blackberry-outage |newspaper=[[The Economist]] |access-date=January 25, 2018 |url-access=subscription}}</ref> The outage intensified calls by shareholders for a shake-up in the company's leadership.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Garside |first1=Juliette |date=October 15, 2011 |title=Service restored, but BlackBerry may never repair its reputation |url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/16/service-restored-but-blackberry-may-never-repair-its-reputation |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=January 25, 2018 |quote="This outage couldn't have come at a worse time," says Francisco Jeronimo, research manager at analyst IDC. "It harms BlackBerry's brand. Corporations, users and mobile operators are now asking themselves: how reliable is RIM?" Activist shareholders, egged on by financial analysts, are hammering on the boardroom door, calling for Lazaridis and Balsillie to leave. Chief among them is Vic Alboini, who runs Jaguar Financial, a merchant bank which claims to have support from 12 of RIM's top 20 stockholders for a change at the top.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Garside |first1=Juliette |date=October 12, 2011 |title=Shareholders put pressure on BlackBerry chiefs to sell up |url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/oct/12/blackberry-chiefs-under-pressure |work=The Guardian |access-date=January 25, 2018 |quote=As RIM battled to contain a three-day outage of its email service, which has spread from Europe to Africa and now North and South America, affecting many of its 70 million users, Jaguar called for Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who are co-chief executives and co-chairmen, to step down. […] RIM declined to comment on shareholder unrest.}}</ref>
Some estimates by BlackBerry are that the company lost between $50 million<ref>{{cite news |date=August 15, 2016 |title=BlackBerry maker selling tablets at a loss, takes $485 million charge |url=https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2011/12/02/blackberry-maker-selling-tablets-at-a-loss-takes-485-million-charge/ |work=[[East Bay Times]] |access-date=January 25, 2018 |quote=The company is also taking a charge of $50 million for an embarrassing October outage of email and Web services that lasted days for millions of overseas BlackBerry users. It briefly spread to the U.S. and Canada before the company was able to contain the damage.}}</ref> to $54 million due to global email service failure and outage in 2011.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Whittaker |first1=Zack |date=March 30, 2012 |title=RIM lost $54 million on four-day global BlackBerry outage |url=https://www.zdnet.com/article/rim-lost-54-million-on-four-day-global-blackberry-outage/ |work=ZDNet |access-date=January 25, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=King |first1=Leo |date=October 12, 2011 |title=BlackBerry Users Express Anger At Two Day Outage |url=https://www.csoonline.com/article/2129818/data-protection/blackberry-users-express-anger-at-two-day-outage.html |work=CSO Online by IDG |access-date=January 25, 2018 |archive-date=January 26, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180126125614/https://www.csoonline.com/article/2129818/data-protection/blackberry-users-express-anger-at-two-day-outage.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>