Blackberry Storm: Buying frenzy cripples website

The new Blackberry caused quite a storm at its launch in the US. US news agencies report that, following the release of the Blackberry Storm, customer interest caused the online shop of US mobile telco Verizon to crash on Friday. Verizon's branches were also affected by the system crash. According to the reports, the police had to calm down a crowd of 200 disappointed customers in front of a New York branch who had queued for hours to get hold of the new device.

The Storm is the first Blackberry device by vendor Research in Motion (RIM) to be completely touch-screen oriented via its 480 x 360 pixel display. The vendor now also offers the Application Center, a new distribution channel for Blackberry software similar to Apple's App Store, which allows users on the move to download and install new software onto their devices.

In Britain, the Blackberry Storm will be available from Vodafone.

(lghp)