Oh boy. As if yesterday’s BIS outage wasn’t bad enough for RIM, it looks like whatever solution they managed to cook up isn’t quite doing the trick. Reports of yet another outage have begun to make the rounds, and users in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East are once again unable to browse the web, send emails, or fire off BBM messages.
RIM has acknowledged the issue via their official BlackBerryHelp Twitter account by saying that “some areas have messaging delays and impaired browsing.” Their tweet doesn’t make it sound too bad, but representatives from T-Mobile UK, Vodafone Egypt, Bahraini carrier Batelco, and Kenyan operator Safaricom have all confirmed that their customers are being affected.
While RIM scrambles for a fix, they may also be facing some issues a bit closer to home. Activist investor Jaguar Financial has been calling on RIM to enact some drastic changes for about a month now, but Reuters reports that the company has managed to gain the support of other BlackBerry shareholders. As it stands, Jaguar claims to have the backing of enough investors to account for 8% of RIM’s total stock.
Jaguar Chief Exec Vic Alboini has mentioned that with the support of those shareholders, Jaguar will be able to demand a shareholder meeting to gain more traction for their vision for RIM. And what exactly is that vision? Jaguar wants RIM to undergo a “value maximization” process that could involve selling RIM’s patents, or even the entire company. What’s more, Jaguar is calling for a shake-up in RIM management that would begin with ousting co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie.
At this point, it’s beyond crucial for RIM to get their affairs in order, because things are starting to look grim. It certainly wouldn’t be impossible for RIM to turn things around, but these days their road just seems to be getting rougher and rougher.
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