The Blackberry line of smartphones had a 10-hour blackout Tuesday night. The primary business smartphone brand in three major US industries has a devoted following.
Wall Street. Politics. The entertainment industry. All three huge North American industries rely heavily on the Blackberry for remote email access, and all three huge industries went into meltdown when the RIM Blackberry system crashed this past week. Like mourning the withdrawal from any drug, Crackberry addicts went into denial ("It just needs new batteries!"), anger ("This is @&#* up!"), bargaining ("I swear I won't check for new emails during family dinner if my Blackberry starts working again now."), depression ("What am I going to do with no Blackberry service?"), and finally, acceptance ("I suppose I can log onto my work email through my laptop.")
Then, as soon as all the hedge fund managers, politicos and line producers Kubler-Rossed themselves into dealing with the systemwide Blackberry crash, it was over. People are still talking about how this Blackberry blackout, less than 12 hours long, affected their business days. Research in Motion, the company that makes the Blackberry line, is getting to the bottom of what caused the Blackberry crash; it may have something to do with the skyrocketing popularity of this smartphone.
The rapid growth of Blackberry products' popularity is due, at least in part, to the user-friendly Blackberry Pearl. The Pearl has a cameraphone and center navigation wheel, is faster than its predecessors, and freezes up less than the Blackberry 7100. It's less for business, more for fun. More recently, RIM launched the Blackberry 8800, a business ready smartphone with faster multimedia functions and a center nav wheel. Both the Blackberry Pearl and 8800 are very fast, with reasonably good web access - and they look great. No wonder RIM may be having a hard time keeping up with demand for these high tech gadgets. Last night, I saw one Blackberry fan absentmindedly press his Blackberry 7700 to his lips: It looked just like a kiss. ...And maybe, it was. As popular as Blackberry phones are, it probably wouldn't be the first time.
