The company has issued a brief statement, cited in The Wall Street Journal, calling the problem a “service issue impacting some users in Europe, the Middle East & Africa. All relevant support teams are working to resolve the issue. We apologize to any customers who may be affected.”
RIM did not offer any reason for the problems.
The outage probably could not have come at a worse time for the company. The iPhone 5 from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) goes on sale around the world today, and the impact on RIM would have been serious even without the network issue. The company has been losing market share for years to Apple and smartphone makers that use the Android operating system from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG). Today’s outage will only speed up the losses.
RIM’s shares closed down more than 4% yesterday, at $6.91, and are down another penny in premarket trading this morning. The stock’s 52-week range is $6.33 to $24.74.
Paul Ausick
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