RIM ramps apology parade for outage: Lazaridis up to bat

Research in Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis apologized to customers for its outage and for the company's communications. Lazaridis said he couldn't give a timeline for a fix.

"It has been my goal to provide reliable real time communications. We did not deliver on that goal this week," he said. "You expect better from us."

In a video posted on a BlackBerry status update page, Lazaridis said that RIM service is almost back to normal in India, the Middle East and Africa and the company is seeing progress, but it may come in fits and starts. Lazaridis said he couldn't give a timeline for full resolution. Update: RIM said that service is now restored.

Also: BlackBerry breaks wall of silence; describes current status in lay terms |   RIM's BlackBerry outages come at worst possible time

On Wednesday, RIM's CIO also outlined the issues and apologized. What's unclear is whether these apologies will go very far with customers. The timing of RIM's outages couldn't be worse with the launch of Apple's iPhone 4S and a new BlackBerry 7 cycle.

Wedbush Securities analyst Scott Sutherland said:

While the issues are known and addressable and the company appears to be putting in its best efforts, we believe that this puts a crimp on RIM’s core messaging strengths. According to RIM, the current disruption commenced in Europe with the failure of a core switch likely at RIM’s Slough NOC. Messages to Europe then started to backlog in the Americas and lead to service outages in several regions. We believe that while these issues will be fixed, bigger questions loom over the likely damage to RIM’s hitherto strong messaging brand perception. We still believe that most of RIM’s value is in the network and messaging business and this could crimp that value.