Five years ago today, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs stood on stage at the annual MacWorld event and unveiled a device that would transform the mobile phone market forever.

The device was, of course, the iPhone and it kicked the mobile phone industry into a whole new era, with the effects still being felt today as Google, Research in Motion, Microsoft and Nokia have all been forced to play catch-up in the battle for market share.

Jobs knew Apple was on to a winner when he launched the device, arguing it was far ahead of any other device on the market, which at the time meant unattractive, brick-like machines which lacked the sense of fun and style that were the iPhone's trademarks.

"[The] iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is five years ahead of any other mobile phone. We are all born with the ultimate pointing device - our fingers - and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse," he boasted.

Now, of course, Apple is under more pressure than ever from its rivals, particularly from Android-based handsets from manufacturers like Samsung and HTC, but the continued appetite shown for each new device the firm launches, most recently the iPhone 4S, shows it still has a cutting edge in the market.

The next 12 months are likely to be a key time for the market too after the sad passing of Jobs, with Apple expected to unveil the iPhone 5 at some point in the coming year.

A key figure in this development is likely to be the recently knighted Jony Ive, the head of industrial design at the firm and Jobs' "spiritual partner", whose job it is to produce the next wave of devices at Apple with a clear mission to maintain its status as the top-dog in the smartphone industry.

Certainly, if the firm can achieve the same level of success in the next five years with its iPhone devices as it did in the first five, Ive will have proved himself a worthy successor, with a little help from Tim Cook of course.

The announcement that RIM is adding support to Microsoft Office 365 should be welcome news to firms that have investments in BlackBerrys and Microsoft's email system, a group which no doubt makes up a large proportion of the business world.

RIM's BlackBerry Business Cloud Services offers access to Microsoft Exchange Online email, as well as calendar, contacts, tasks and memos via the BlackBerry. And even better for IT workers is the news that they can provision, manage and secure individual handsets using a web-based console.

If RIM handles this rollout correctly, it could reinvigorate its popularity in the business world, letting its enterprise customers take advantage of the latest cloud technologies from Microsoft while still retaining the famed BlackBerry security standards.

However, there are still challenges for RIM to overcome, highlighted to V3 during a conversation with the global IT manager of a UK media company off the back of Tuesday's announcement.

The first of these is the recent BlackBerry outage issues.

"Our confidence in RIM has taken a bit of a bashing recently with the outages. Do I really want to put 200 users in a new cloud service, when the reliability hasn't been proved?" he said.

Another issue is the early stage status of the BlackBerry Business Cloud Services. The company V3 spoke to is in the process of a move to Office 365, so has been eagerly awaiting this move from RIM.

"As someone who's responsible for the email of the entire company, am I really comfortable using a beta version?" he questioned.

However, he added that there is pressure from elsewhere in the business to adopt the technology as soon as possible, now that the investment has been made in Office 365.

"I've got close to 200 BlackBerry users, and otherwise I need to keep those mail boxes in house, rather than move them to the cloud," he said.

On the positive side, he welcomed the news that this technology could be free of charge for organisations, as there was a concern that there would be an additional cost to tie the two products together.

And he supported V3's initial suspicions that this release has been timed to help RIM wipe away lingering concerns over the recent service outages.

"The expectation was that this release wouldn't be ready until Christmas, so it's very useful that they're doing it now," he said.

If RIM did indeed rush this one out earlier than planned, hopefully it won't backfire and end up with glitches in the technology and more unhappy customers.

Research in Motion founder Mike Lazaridis has been forced to take to the web to personally apologise for the outages affecting users across the globe this week.

He said it's too early to say if the issue has been completely fixed, but added that normal service levels are just around the corner for EMEA.

"Since launching BlackBerry in 1999, it's been my goal to provide reliable, real time communications around the world," he said. "We did not deliver on that goal this week. Not even close. You expect better from us and I expect better from us."

Lazaridis, however, did warn that there would be "some instability" as the problem was resolved.

There was also a rare admission of failure on the part of RIM, in the sluggish way it initially communicated with its customers.

Many took to Twitter in the early days of the outage to express their anger not only at being left without a business critical service, but also for being given no information on what was happening and what was being done by RIM to fix it.

"We know that you want to hear more from us, and we're working to update you more frequently to update you through our websites and social media channels as we gather more information," he said.

As London braces for a possible fourth night of violence, the local MP for Tottenham, where rioting first erupted on Saturday, has apparently called for BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) to be shut down this evening to disrupt the plans of would-be rioters.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, David Lammy said that the service is helping the rioters to organise themselves in a way that leaves the police constantly one step behind.

The point has been made before, and holds some truth given that BBM's encrypted messages effectively give the looters a private social network to communicate without fear of surveillance.

Twitter has also been blamed for helping groups to co-ordinate their efforts in an agile and dynamic way, although the authorities, of course, are technically able to monitor these communications.

It remains to be seen whether shutting BBM would actually do much to dent the success of the rioters. Some have suggested, in fact, that mobile operators could already be complying with the authorities to allow access to mobile data.

If this is true, and if RIM complies in decrypting the messages, it could be better to keep the service up and running to monitor messages and catch those responsible.

As London prepares for a potential third night of sporadic rioting in the wake of the fatal shooting by police of father of four Mark Duggan, questions are inevitably being asked about the technologies which many believe are to blame.

In a tiresomely predictable backlash, the Metropolitan Police blamed social media this morning for helping groups of rioters to organise quickly and dynamically in a way that police were incapable of responding to speedily enough.

There are a couple of questions that beg to be asked if this is the case: why aren't the police capable of monitoring social media better, and haven't they heard of BlackBerry Messenger?

Starting in Tottenham, the rioting has spread to Brixton, Enfield, Walthamstow and even Oxford Circus, and arrests are being made in Hackney at the time of writing.

To say that it has caught the police by surprise is an understatement, but to blame it on Twitter and other forms of social media is to ignore the underlying cause of the unrest and, quite literally, to blame the messenger.

It also underlines just how far the police have to go before they become social media savvy. Having reportedly just received a four-fold funding increase which will enable the Police Central e-Crime Unit to swell its numbers from 20 to 85, maybe now would be a good time to engage properly with Web 2.0.

The tech vendors have certainly wasted no time in broadcasting the fact that the tools are out there to enable organisations to do just that.

Alcatel-Lucent gets a prize for being the first to ping into my inbox, explaining that its Genesys Social Engagement offering can help organisations monitor social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter in real time.

The tool works for a big brand keen to engage with its customers and prevent bad publicity just as much as it could for the police to track trends and prevent violence.

Not only is the Met wrong to blame social media, though, it is also probably wrong to single it out, after news emerged that BlackBerry Messenger has been a potentially more pervasive tool used by rioters to organise activities.

This encrypted instant message-type service effectively gives its senders anonymity, although it is pretty clear that BlackBerry maker RIM will hand over encryption keys if asked.

It's lazy and ignorant to blame technology for the spread of social unrest. Twitter, social networks and other communications tools have saved countless lives as well as occasionally enabling the sort of mindless violence we've seen in parts of London in recent days.

If it wasn't Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger, people would find another way to communicate and rally. I don't seem to remember web-based tools being implicated in the Poll Tax riots.

RIM's woes have continued after the smartphone maker lost a senior product manager to major rival Samsung.

Ryan Biden, formerly a senior product manager for the BlackBerry PlayBook, defected to the Korean manufacturer, where he is now director of product marketing.

He is the second high-level executive to leave RIM in the past month, following Brian Wallace, who was vice president of digital media and is now vice president of strategic marketing at Samsung.

Biden's last official act was to help launch the PlayBook, which debuted to a mixed reception. The device was plagued by problems on release, and RIM had to embarrassingly admit that it had shipped 1,000 faulty models. However, the tablet appears to be back on track as RIM shipped 500,000 devices in the most recent quarter.

Still, RIM has been struggling with numerous problems over the past 12 months. The firm received scathing criticism from Morgan Stanley for ineffective R&D ahead of its financial results, which were below par.

The firm's shares plunged by 15 per cent in mid-June after it announced that profits were down $74m year on year.

Dissent within the RIM ranks was also confirmed by an anonymous high-level employee, who published an open letter outlining faults in the current management.

Among the criticisms were a poor management structure, a lack of focus on developers, and an accusation that the company is carrying too much dead wood.