Saudi Arabia pulls the trigger…
Saudi Arabia briefly turned off data services for Blackberry phones. Maybe Saudi Arabia is following Don’t Blink Design’s lead and switching over to the iPhone.
At 4 a.m. EST on August 6, Saudi Arabia flipped the switch off for fours hours and then, suddenly, came back on again. It sounds like Saudi Arabia playing chicken to show that they’re capable? Or has Blackberry made some threat to Saudi Arabia? Or is the Crackberry so addicting that enraged customers started mass chaos – slaughtering and eating pigs?
Saudi Arabia is just one in a list of countries who are threatening to turn off data services due to a lack of control of their users’ communication. The United Arab Emirates has given Blackberry till October 11th before they pull the plug. Lebanon and India have also voiced their concerns over communication security and could follow the Saudi Arabia bandwagon.
Blackberry, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be worried at all. According to Reuters, RIM’s Chief Technology Officer David Yacht believes that Saudi Arabia “will have trouble pulling the trigger to shut down BlackBerry…Most governments in the world rely on BlackBerry.” Well, now that Saudi Arabia has shut off the data services (for four hours), Blackberry can no longer be confident in Saudi Arabia’s trigger finger. Hey Blackberry, Saudi Arabia can easily switch over to the hundreds of other smartphones providers that are out there so Blackberry shouldn’t feel so special.
I’m just hoping that this backlash on Blackberry will spell the end for this mobile phone company. While I have never had a Blackberry, I have been around enough people who do have these life-sucking devices to know that it’s official: most smartphones are better than any Blackberry model. The only “perk” of owning one is BBM and most smartphones have their own application that customers can download with the same capabilities. So the lesson of the day: countries should switch off Blackberry services for lack of innovation.
