BLACKBERRY

John Stuart has been chained to his BlackBerry for years, first as a systems manager for Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley and then as chief information officer for Beverly Hills Wealth Management.

Apple finally released its highly anticipated iPhone 4S on Oct. 14, which comes with its new iOS 5 operating system and some 200 new features. The iPhone 4S also includes Siri voice control, Reminders and more.

Apple's release of the iOS 5 couldn't have been at a more perfect time when RIM BlackBerry is having major outage problems. And with the new iMessage feature on iOS5 RIM could take another hit.

Apple Inc's new iPhone went on sale in stores across the globe on Friday, prompting thousands to queue around city blocks to snap up the final gadget unveiled during Steve Jobs' life.

Research In Motion Ltd. said a server problem has hampered accessing emails for three days by BlackBerry customers worldwide. RIM apologized for the service interruptions and delays and said that there was significant increase in service levels.

A four-day service outage has cast a shadow over BlackBerry's reputation in India, one of the smartphone maker's few growing markets, where the frustration of hundreds of thousands of users could mean a chance for its rivals to gain ground.

Research In Motion's co-CEOs have apologized to millions of BlackBerry customers for a four-day outage that has tarnished RIM's image and set back its drive to catch up with Apple and other smartphone rivals.

Dear Tim Cook, Apple CEO: Now that you are essentially betting Apple on iOS 5 and a whole family of iPhones, iPods, iPads and Macs that run it, you've just been handed a great case study by your Canadian rival, Research in Motion. For three days, BlackBerry customers worldwide couldn't access e-mails. This, the company said, was due to a server problem in England.

Research In Motion has fixed the root cause of a global disruption of BlackBerry services and is still working to clear a backlog of delayed messages, its co-CEOs said on Thursday, hoping to control the damage to RIM four days after the outage began.

Wealth managers prefer using Apple products for business rather than Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices, a survey by Aite Group showed on Thursday.

Research In Motion said on Thursday it was working aggressively to prevent any recurrence of the service disruptions that have affected millions of BlackBerry users around the world this week.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion faced the prospect of a compensation bill from network providers on Thursday as it wrestled for a fourth day to get the world's dominant mobile email service working properly.

The iMessage feature on the iOS 5 system may mean less money to the phone company and more money to spend on more Apple products.

BlackBerry outages spread all over the world on Wednesday, prompting people to think whether RIM is in its death throes already. BlackBerry encountered an outage of email, messaging and Internet services since Monday in India, Europe and the Middle East. On Wednesday, it spread to Canada and the U.S.

After a three-day outage that disrupted e-mail and Internet services for millions of customers on phone, Blackberry services came back to life on Wednesday across Europe, Africa, India and the Middle East.

Women in India's capital, New Delhi, will soon be able to fight off potential attackers with a push of a phone button that will alert not only friends, family and police but also sound an alarm on their social networking websites.

All this week, BlackBerry owners in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India have been without service for the third day in a row. Today, there's news that it's spreading to North American users.

Now comes the latest -- a three-day outage of BlackBerry services including email and Internet across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India plus some spotty outages in the U.S. Here's where you start to feel for the company: While the RIM and BlackBerry have been all but dead in the U.S, life remained for the company, its products, and services in these other countries.

Research In Motion's BlackBerry services have improved significantly across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India, the company said on Thursday, after a three-day global service outage hit millions of its customers.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion faced the prospect of a compensation bill from network providers on Thursday as the world's dominant provider of mobile email struggled for a fourth day with service glitches.

Overstretched Apple servers worldwide ground to a halt on Wednesday as iOS 5 upgrade requests from hundreds of thousands of users swamped the Web site. The geeky quest for the latest in tech drove the upgrade rush, but experts say ordinary people should also upgrade to iOS 5 to make their devices more secure.