Reports of an outage causing inconvenience to BlackBerry users hit the web early Friday morning as the firm’s services got disrupted. BlackBerry users in Europe, Middle East and Africa were affected. However, Research in Motion (RIM) got the team investigate the matter and around three hours later, the systems went back up to function normally.
The reports were confirmed by the firm on BlackBerry UK Twitter account. The tweet said, “Some users experienced issues with BlackBerry services today. Apologies for any inconvenience caused. All services now operating normally.”
The outage affected a lot of people, though the number stays unclear. BlackBerry users couldn’t send or receive e-mails during the interruption.
The disruption of services couldn’t come at a worse time for phone maker. RIM had faced similar situation last year in October, when its services went down for several days in the US.
It also comes at a time when RIM is getting prepared for a developer’s conference next week following the sales of its tablet, the PlayBook. RIM is also trying hard to keep its foothold steady in the smartphone market, dominated by Apple and Samsung. And looking at the hit of iPhone 5 on the headlines surely won’t be a boost for the company.
The Canadian company has already delayed the launch of its system, BlackBerry 10 twice.
Thorsten Heins, CEO, RIM, has defended his decision for the delay in release. He said he wants to ensure its smooth functioning before taking it out for customers. The BB10, however, is speculated to hit the stores in January next year.
As per reported in CIO.com, Heins said, “I won’t give you a specific date, but it’s kind of like a one-two punch. You will see more than two devices, but I can also tell you that you will see us being much more focused in the product portfolio that we will be bringing out.”
RIM shares were trading nearly 2 percent down at the market’s open, at a price of $6.80 per share.
