Research In Motion confirmed Thursday that an outage caused some BlackBerry customers to experience delays when sending and receiving personal e-mail messages.
Executives at RIM said in a statement that the company is working to resolve the problem. The outage, however, didn't affect PIN-to-PIN messaging or regular BlackBerry phone or Web service.
RIM said in a statement that, "Some BlackBerry customers may be currently experiencing delays receiving e-mail. Our technical teams are working to resolve this issue for those impacted. Phone services, browsing and PIN-to-PIN messaging are not impacted. We apologize for any inconvenience."
The outage, which lasted for about eight hours, affected all North American BlackBerry customers who rely on their BlackBerry phone for e-mail service, but not corporate customers using BlackBerry Enterprise Service, according to the Toronto Star. Both Verizon, the U.S. largest mobile carrier with about 89 million customers, and Sprint Nextel experienced disruptions, according to Bloomberg. Rogers Communications, Canada's biggest wireless carrier, is also undergoing delays and interruptions.
Some BlackBerry customers were able to regain e-mail service later Thursday morning, according to the Star.
Meanwhile, RIM is still dealing with millions of backlogged e-mails from the incident. And the outage also affects BlackBerry's standing on the consumer front with its biggest competitor, Apple iPhone.
RIM said that as of September, more than 50 percent of its total user base was nonbusiness consumers, while 80 percent of its second-quarter subscribers were noncorporate.
The e-mail failure comes as RIM plans to release its third-quarter results Thursday after markets close. Its second-quarter results fell below analysts' expectations with a 4 percent drop in profit and a conservative third-quarter forecast.
