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Server outage leaves T-Mobile "hiptop" Sidekicks stranded

Server trouble left many Sidekick users without their data yesterday. Danger's phone is a thin client, and data is stored on servers at the carrier. Danger itself manages the server, and the carrier business is its principle revenue stream. Outages were reported from all over the continental United States.

Danger, which sells the Sidekick through T-Mobile in the United States, explained yesterday that "some users may experience degradation in service (e.g., connection and email delay) which is currently being resolved by Danger engineers."

The outages affected email, web connections and messaging. However one user foresaw The Rise of The Machines™

"The machines are playing with our heads, their goint to take over. Judgement Day!" [sic] he wrote.

The upside of a server model is that users don't lose their data if the device malfunctions. The server also optimises connections, which is why the device feels zippier than a standard GPRS mobile. The downside is that if the umbilical connection to the internet is lost, there's no local persistent storage. Many users affected couldn't reach their web desktops, either.

This story copyright The Register

Guy Kewney adds: This news is wretched timing for Danger. The success of the HipTop in the US has been stellar and stars and celebs like Paris Hilton hold them up to cameras and enthuse about them - but what the company wants is European distribution.

The problem that they face isn't hackers. It's the high cost of mobile data in the European markets. The T-Mobile offering comes with "all the data you can eat" pricing - around $18 a month. For that, you can take all the pictures you like, send all the emails you like, update your calendar and PIM a hundred times a day, and browse the web until the battery runs out. The same habits in Europe would probably cost you more like $180 a month.

The device generates high Average Revenue Per User, but ARPU isn't the same as average profit per user; and in Europe, it would spoil already tight margins.

Everybody knew that the device had a theoretical "single point of failure" in Danger's server. Until now, Danger could gloss over that problem. Now, it adds just another worry for companies like Orange, which had been seriously considering launching a European HipTop.