In the annals of company failures that permanently affect a product, the Sidekick wipeout may have its own chapter. On Saturday, T-Mobile and Microsoft announced that a Microsoft subsidiary had suffered a “data-service disruption” that wiped out all Sidekick users’ contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists, and photos.
The Sidekick phone emphasizes its social connectivity, so the personal data is particularly important to most owners. Sidekick’s data is maintained by a company appropriately named Danger, a subsidiary of Microsoft. For more than a week, the phones have been suffering data outages, and there have been reports of some users trying to reboot their phones by removing the battery — which erases saved info on the device.
A joint statement said T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger “express our apologies” for the wipeout.
‘An Unmitigated Disaster’
Apologies may not be enough for the estimated one million T-Mobile Sidekick customers. Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis, called the episode “an unmitigated disaster.”
In fact, he said, “this may prove to be a fatal blow to the Sidekick brand.” Greengart pointed out that this was “much worse than just a service outage.”
At the very least, he said, Sidekick will take a “very large hit,” but it may well turn out to be a final hit. The phone is already facing serious competition, he noted, from “flashier smartphones” such as Motorola’s CLIQ, which has more to offer the same young customer who wants a socially connected device.
“I wouldn’t buy a Sidekick today,” he said, adding that T-Mobile will survive this disaster even if the device doesn’t.
Greengart said a big reason that the episode is such a head-slapping failure is a rumor he’s heard that Danger didn’t have a backup for the servers that went down. “I’ve been hearing from a lot of IT people, from small shops and…