BlackBerry suffers outages across Europe, Africa, India

GlobalPost

Thumbs took a rest across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India after BlackBerry email outages hit the smart phones on Monday for several hours, Reuters reports.

The outages are just another part of the woes plaguing the BlackBerry manufacturer, Research in Motion, leaving it open as a takeover target, Reuters reports.

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BlackBerry users reported either disruptions or complete outage of email and BlackBerry Messenger services.

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“We are working to resolve an issue currently impacting some BlackBerry subscribers in Europe, Middle East and Africa and India,” said RIM in an email sent directly to Reuters New Delhi. An identical statement was sent out to users in Canada and Europe, except omitting the India reference, Reuters reports.

RIM also noted on its Twitter that customer service representatives said the company was investigating problems with some European and Mideast customer accounts and apologized for the interruption, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The outage piggybacks last month’s BlackBerry Messenger disruption in the Americas. RIM’s stock was down by 20 percent last month, $3 billion in value, after bleak quarterly results. This has raised thoughts of a potential company break-up, sell-out or new leadership, Reuters reports.

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