Palm Takes Jab at BlackBerry Outages

Palm has some fun at RIM's expense

One company's misstep is often a prime opportunity for a competitor to come in and take advantage. Companies like Sony and Microsoft stab each other in the back all the time with regards to consoles. We even saw Nokia take a jab at Apple over the "locked" iPhone.

In the case of Palm, Inc., the company saw a great opportunity to go after Research in Motion (RIM) over its service interruption on Monday.

Frustrated BlackBerry users were sidelined when they had problems sending emails and documents using the RIM-supplied data service. The outages were later blamed on a system upgrade aimed to boost the overall capacity of the data network.

Palm now has an advertisement on its U.S. website that pokes fun at RIM's folly. The ad touts the importance of uptime and notes that Palm smartphones "Connect to your Microsoft Exchange Server. No third-party servers and no nationwide blackouts."

It's mildly amusing attack on RIM and its popular BlackBerry mobile devices, but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Palm recently ranked last in a mobile phone customer satisfaction survey performed by ChangeWave. The survey showed that only 30% of Palm customers were happy with their devices compared to 55% for BlackBerry owners. Apple's iPhone took top honors with 72%.

Perhaps we'll see ads from RIM taking a jab at Palm's last-place ranking in the future -- or maybe RIM considers itself above such antics.