It must be pretty hard being RIM right now. iOS and Android continue to eat into their market share, the BlackBerry service being disrupted for days on end was disastrous, and the PlayBook is failing to see strong sales numbers even after the price drops in the US and UK.
Bad news just keeps getting worse: now the company has been hit by a class action lawsuit thanks to the BlackBerry service outage. It was filed in California on Wednesday on behalf of all BlackBerry users in the US who had an active service agreement at the time of the outage. I guess the promise of free apps didn’t please everyone, huh?
The man who filed the suit, Eric Mitchell, says that RIM failed to provide service and thus breached contract. Even though the fees for service were paid through Sprint, Mitchell believes he has an “implied contract” with RIM.
As for the PlayBook, The Register has a source who says that large sales numbers have failed to materialize despite the price drop. Why? Once again it comes back to the BlackBerry outage, with their tipster saying that “people have lost confidence.” The other shortcomings of the tablet such as lack of native email are sure to contribute to the slow growth too.
RIM aren’t quite down and out yet. Maybe we’ll all look back at this a year from now and laugh while we’re drooling over the new BBX phones. Maybe.
Source: Reuters via SlashGear, The Register
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