The Successful Investor Hotline – Friday, October 14, 2011

Article Excerpt

RESEARCH IN MOTION LTD., $24.26, Toronto symbol RIM, fell slightly this week, because of technical problems that stopped or slowed the delivery of emails to BlackBerry smartphone users. The outage also disrupted the company’s popular BlackBerry Messenger instant-messaging service. It did not affect voice calls. The problems began when a critical part of RIM’s infrastructure in Europe failed. An automatic backup system also failed. The outage eventually spread to other parts of the world, including Africa, Asia and North America. Unlike other smartphone companies, RIM compresses and encrypts email and messages before sending it through carrier networks. That makes its systems more secure, and relieves the load on wireless carriers. Still, wireless carriers that have offered refunds to their customers may seek compensation from RIM. Network problems like this are rare, and this setback is unlikely to permanently damage RIM’s reputation. In fact, it will prompt the company to install more backup systems to make its networks more reliable. RIM…