[By Craig Wilson]

It’s all too easy to forget how dependent we have become on mobile communications technology. Until it fails. When it does, the knives come out and consumers threaten mass defection to alternative platforms.

Canada’s Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry devices, experienced this consumer backlash last week when its servers went down for more than three days, affecting users across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia and the Americas.

RIM’s outage also reminded an industry fixated on cloud-based computing that putting all of your eggs in one basket can have unpleasant consequences.

In RIM’s case, all data transmission goes through its network because that is how it guarantees the security of its customers’ data and offers compression to operators so they can provide cheaper tariff options to BlackBerry users.

That’s also why when things went awry, undelivered instant messages and e-mails began to pile up, worsening the problem and increasing the resolution time.

Though it took RIM far longer than it should have to deal with the PR mess the outage led to, the company did eventually do the necessary grovelling and offer the right apologies. Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis released a contrite apology in a YouTube video where he looked suitably crestfallen, and the company is now offering its customers US$100 of free applications as compensation.

But even there hadn’t been for this attempt to make good, there is no way a three-day outage was going to sink the BlackBerry ship. Its customers are loyal — often fiercely so — and there aren’t many comparable offers available.

BlackBerry’s market share is slipping in developed markets, losing ground to the iPhone and Android-powered smartphones because of the relative affordability of data services and the perceived superiority of these devices. In developing markets like SA, there is still no alternative as compelling as the BlackBerry Internet Service with its sub-R60 unlimited on-device e-mail, messaging and Web browsing.

BlackBerry remains one of the most affordable smartphone propositions. It also remains the most desirable handset manufacturer for most SA teenagers, irrespective of their economic background, and that’s also unlikely to change because of last week’s outage.

It’s fair to assume BlackBerry sales won’t fall off a cliff in emerging markets anytime soon.

For those of us who watched the story closely, it’s tempting to predict the worst for RIM. But I expect most people will simply forgive the company for the inconvenience; still many more will simply forget it ever happened.

RIM’s biggest challenge isn’t its recent outage. Rather, it’s the fact that what makes the BlackBerry a compelling offering is becoming less so as data becomes cheaper, instant messaging services become cross-platform and e-mail becomes a less frequently used means of communication.

It won’t be the great BlackBerry blackout that leads RIM’s fall from grace. Rather, it will come about if it isn’t able to keep up with the blistering pace of innovation in the smartphone market.