RIM says working hard to fix outage issue

Blackberry maker Research In Motion said yesterfday that it was working on an emergency basis to resolve issues related to the three-day global disruption of BlackBerry services as millions of angry smartphone users pressure the company to implement sweeping changes.

In a damage control exercise, the Canadian company, in a conference call vowed to deliver all email and instant messages to millions of customers hit by the outage. But some clients were later told it might be Thursday morning before the huge backlog was cleared on the US east coast.

Shares of RIM were down 3.9 per cent in Toronto trade following the late-afternoon call, which RIM arranged days following the disruptions in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India which later spread to the Americas.

Though the drop was rather modest, prices of RIM's shares have fallen over 50 per cent since the beginning of the year. following a series of profit warnings, product missteps and slim chances an early turnaround.

According to analysts, this week's  disruption, the worst after an outage two years ago, that affected the company's operations in North Amerca, is likely to stoke calls for a management shake-up as also a possible sale or split of the company, which has fallen far behind Apple and other rivals in a rapidly changing market.

Analysts say, the troubles could damage RIM's unblemished reputation for secure and reliable message delivery and lead to further devaluation of its proprietary BlackBerry offering.