BlackBerry has outages in Europe, Africa, India

BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India suffered email outages for several hours on Monday, adding to the woes of struggling manufacturer Research in Motion, increeasingly seen as a takeover target. Twitter users and Reuters correspondents from Britain to Dubai to New Delhi reported disruptions or complete outages of their email and BlackBerry Messenger services. RIM said in an email sent to Reuters New Delhi: "We are working to resolve an issue currently impacting some BlackBerry subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa and India." In Europe and Canada, it put out an identical statement but omitted the reference to India.

Bit of a glitch

"We are investigating, and we apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused whilst this is resolved," RIM said, declining to provide further detail. RIM, which once owned the corporate mobile email market, has been losing share to smartphone rivals led by Apple's iPhone as employees from the boardroom down demanded more choice. A poor reception for its Playbook tablet computer has increased pressure on RIM's top management, while a string of senior staff have left. Monday's outage follows last month's BlackBerry Messenger disruption in the Americas. Last month, investors drove RIM stock down by 20 percent, or $3 billion in value, after dismal quarterly results, raising prospects of a break-up, sale or new leadership.