I'm sure I'm not seeing all the details on this or capable of understanding some of the technology behind it, but it seems to me RIM may have stepped over the edge of a slippery slope in an attempt to put volume over quality.
Part of the appeal of RIM as it rose to dominate the business messaging sector (long before it ever deemed it necessary to carry voice as well) was reliability. Blackberries just worked; long battery life, etc. It was only as they proliferated that security became as important and that RIM could offer because all BB traffic moved through only a couple of servers on the planet. This of course caused its own issues when a server failure in Waterloo could stop BBM traffic across North America, but those instances were rare.
Having succumbed to the demands of one dictatorship for a local server, how does RIM say no to the dozens of other like-minded governments, with possibilities of much greater sales, who want to keep an ear and eye open to the local citizenry as well as the expats working in those countries? Will RIM put Saudies on their own server but keep the North Americans living/working in SA on the Waterloo server? Is that possible? How will business users react if they know the local national government has access to all their messages while they negotiate their multi-million dollar deals, just as the local government is listening in on the messages of local youths setting up a clandestine date?
Moreover, multiple servers around the world operated by local staff the governments will no doubt insist RIM hire, will be more prone to system failure than one or two centres operated by engineers engrained in the BB system since their first co-op placement at UofW.
RIM appears to me to have compromised its original purpose and clients in a desperate move to add numbers of users world-wide, look good in comparison to its Android and iOS competitors and, thereby, maintain the value of its shares. It's a strategy that will fail, IMO, rendering RIM shares as valuable as Nortel in a few years.
RIM would be better to stick to its original strength, even if that means "sacrificing" some sales. The corporate sector will gladly pay more for BB service if is is assured the service is reliable and secure and RIM can maintain its revenues/profits, share value.
But if RIM goes for numbers over quality, with new devices which are poor imitations of the competitors (even the most fawning reviews have rated the Torch's display as 5 years out-of-date), it will fail. If you hold RIM shares (which I do not), sell asap.