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For the second time in the past year, technical failures have caused a widespread outage for Research in Motion's extremely popular BlackBerry. RIM says that a significant failure has occurred somewhere in the servers it operates to connect the popular hand-held devices that are used by so many businesspeople, to the internet that they must access for their essential daily work. All operators in North America are affected, but not all customers have been affected.

Some have estimated that up to 50% of RIM's 12 million users have not been able to access the Internet through their BlackBerry today. RIM said that it was first made aware of the problems at around 3:30 EST today. The company also said that there is no estimated time of repair, but that the company is working as hard as possible to fix the problem.

This being the second time this has happened in the past year, one has to ask the question "How will Research in Motion's long-term profit outlook be affected by this technical issue?"

The customer loyalty factor, which Research in Motion has spent years building up, has to be the biggest concern for the company right now. The average BlackBerry user is a very busy businessperson who counts on the hand-held device to give them email alerts and allow them to navigate the Internet from the road. On a day like today, when the service is interrupted, it causes significant headaches for people who rely heavily on this product. If this continues to be a problem, one would have to think that users will consider alternative products on the market.

There is clearly a lot on the line here for Research in Motion. It will have to provide a full explanation of what went wrong and regain the trust of its customers. In business, reputation is everything, and right now RIM's reputation is suffering greatly.

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