Blackberry: ‘We Disappointed Our Users'

Not that there's any good time to has a global, cascading failure in your core business, but RIM really picked a bad week to remind everyone that the iPhone really is pretty sexy.

Blackberry's co-ceo Mike Lazaridis told NBC Bay Area that Research and Motion had restored full service after a massive email outage Monday.

The company blames a single network switch for a cascading failure that caused trouble first in Europe at the beginning of the week and moved across the globe, causing email outtages here in North America Wednesday.

"We have disappointed our users, we have disappointed ourselves" said CEO Lazaridis, who posted a video of his apology.

"I decided to make that video", he said, "when I finally had time during the crisis". RIM says it's not certain what caused the switch to fail, but said it was "most likely a hardware failure."

The company pointed out the switch had several redundancies, but those failed too.

A spokesperson for RIM said the company "will make it better" with users, but that the company's focus in the near future was singly on network performance.

Also this week: the iPhone 4 S -- getting rave reviews, including be called a wizard -- is available this weekend.

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