Blackberry - abandoned for iPhone 4S

[iDan]

In the last couple of weeks Blackberry had to deal with some major technical issues that led the companies’ services to downfall, determining some users to abandon their old smartphones in favor of new ones. The problems lasted for days, days where BlackBerry users found their smartphones all but useless – yes, even more useless than usual – and seemingly with no end in sight. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that popular gadget reseller Gazelle has reported that it has witnessed a record-number of Blackberry trade-ins since the launching of the new iPhone 4S.Gazelle’s "Chief Gadget Officer’ Anthony Scarsella told CNET that this is "easily the highest volume of BlackBerry trades ever seen period. In the grand scheme of BlackBerry growth over the past month, it can be pretty much entirely attributed to the launch of the iPhone 4S.”

Certenly this has nothing to do with the fact that RIM has put out a grand total of one quality smartphone this year namely the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930. Following the outage to its network, RIM offered customers a sweetener in the form of $100-worth of free ‘premium apps,’ whatever they are. But all this happened, while Apple was loudly launching its latest iPhone 4S. The media was over the top about the new iPhone, and BlackBerry owners found themselves instantly turned into potential iPhone owners as soon as RIM’s network fell shattered to the ground.

In addition to the spike in Blackberry trade-ins, Gazelle also saw a 72% jump in Android trade-ins for Sprint customers, which is notable considering that Sprint offered an iPhone on their network for the first time ever this month, with the launch of the iPhone 4S.

Source: Forbes

 

[Darkstar2007]

Rip rim. !

 

[iCrank]

I used to be on crack berry so much. I should go back there and see how many faithful bb users are switching. Lol. Bet they won't go back to a BB after they play with a true machine.

Note. Check the $2000 price tag of the blackberry p'9981.

 

[iJeff]

This is just great news for Apple and the carriers that carry it. I to used to be a Blackberry user for years and low and behold the Iphone hit the market and i have been sold ever sense. Thank you Apple for making such change in the world.

 

[spiritwalker]

BBM uses Blackberry servers and not the network , I think thats what they mean .

 

[xtreme]

BB servers carry all BB email and BBM traffic. That has always been their strong point. They are very secure

 

[crowd pleaser]

Interesting. That does seem very secure. I did not know that about BB implementation. So then what you're also politely telling me is that I'm mistaken-and for the time BlackBerries were experiencing outages - my wife was also experiencing the same outages? dde0f

AFAIK from what i read (never owned. BB),

business users were largely not affected as they are on a different server, not all but a sizeable chunk of other users lost services.

It was not security hack like Sony but a central server update in Slough that failed, and so did their backup servers. Because BB handle these services in-house and the shear volume of messages, it only takes a glitch to cause massive backlogs, there is only so much storage and it filled like a network version of a flash flood into a cave system.

Apparently some outraged BB clients are to sue, cost could be £25 million, but the damage to confidence is immeasurable.

 

[JR956678]

for the time BlackBerries were experiencing outages - my wife was also experiencing the same outages? 

I was (still am actually) a Blackberry user, and while I saw some impact during the outage, in my case it was minimal.

As noted, those corporate users who are on BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) - which use corporate Exchange Servers to handle mail - were unaffected by the outage. Those users (such as myself) who use BIS (Blackberry Internet Service) were - BIS uses RIM's servers for email and BBM (Blackberry Messenger - sort of like iMessage) data. RIM selective prioritized traffic for BIS users so that as many services and users as possible worked - email was given priority over BBM messages for example. I personally saw mail get a little slow, and BBM basically not work for about a day. If your wife is not a big BBM user, it's likely she never noticed the problem.

This wasn't the first time BIS has gone down or had problems, and likely won't be the last, though it probably was the longest outage and affected the most users. In my case it has nothing at all to do with why I now have an iPhone 4S.