Blackberry loses face after outage

A STUDY by research organisation Yougov has found that the recent downtime that affected Research in Motion (RIM) and its Blackberry services has also affected the firm's public perception and done considerable damage to its brand.

Yougov's Brain Index, a way of measuring perception, found that while RIM's brand remains fairly untarnished the same can not be said for Blackberry services.

As soon as the downtime was revealed Blackberry's brand perception score fell from +11 points to -26 points. As the situation worsened and the failures spread that score fell to -52. RIM, which was at neutral zero when the problems started, dropped to -14 in the same period.

This is the second time in just a few months that RIM has been the source of controversy, the first being when its name kept coming up during the trouble and rioting in London. Then, as now, it was Blackberry services that suffered the most, said Yougov.

Then, the firm managed to bounce back and regain the public approval that it once had. However, Yougov questioned whether the same will be the case following this latest problem. µ