The three-day global service disruption that ended Thursday might sour but won’t completely sever the lucrative relationship BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has with the U.S. government, according to experts.
That means despite a fairly new interest in devices like iPhones and tablets, federal agencies aren’t expected to start canceling their BlackBerry contracts en masse for sexier gadgets anytime soon.
“They are at the point of no return with BlackBerrys,” said Jaime Gracia, CEO and president of Seville Government Consulting. “Once government settles on a solution, that’s the solution.”
The government bureaucracy doesn’t move as quickly as private business or individual subscribers, some of which have been considering switching smartphones in the past few days. In addition, BlackBerrys are simply too deeply embedded in the everyday business of just about every level of the federal government.
The BlackBerry outage that first affected users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa spread to Washington Wednesday, crippling communication on Capitol Hill and at other levels of the federal government. While some lawmakers enjoyed the break from being tethered to the office, Hill staffers complained that they were suddenly out of the loop if they left their desks.
RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis announced Thursday that service had been fully restored around the world, and the devices started buzzing back to life in Washington .
But the damage had been done: The outages hit Washington’s addiction to the smartphone with a vengeance. And it left many wondering if this could be the death knell for the company’s hold on Uncle Sam’s business.
“This is one more straw on the camel’s back. There is such a groundswell from the federal agencies for iPhones, iPads and things other than BlackBerrys,” said Lauren Jones, a senior principal analyst at government contract consulting firm Deltek. “This definitely doesn’t help RIM.”
The timing of the outages was particularly unfortunate for RIM, as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-powered devices continue to eat into the company’s market share.
The BlackBerry maker’s focus will now turn to making amends with the millions of customers affected by the outages to ensure angry customers don’t jump ship, Lazaridis said.
“We’ve worked 12 years since the launch of BlackBerry to win the trust of 70 million BlackBerry subscribers, and we’re going to fully commit to win that trust back,” he said. “We plan to come back to these customers very, very soon.
By DAVID SALEH RAUF
