RIM says BlackBerry service is restored

RIM has announced that its BlackBerry services have been restored after Monday’s service blackout. Millions of customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were left without access to the internet or its BBM instant messaging tool.

The service blackout lasted almost a full day, from 11am BST on Monday until around 9.30am BST on Tuesday.

“Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues. We’re investigating, and we apologise for any inconvenience,” the firm wrote yesterday in a post on its official Twitter account, before updating it Tuesday morning with: “BlackBerry services have been restored. We apologise to our customers for any inconvenience caused.”

The Twitter account was subsequently inundated with responses by customers demanding compensation or they would take their business elsewhere.

The outage comes after a disappointing financial quarter for RIM, which saw Q2 profits slide to less than half of the previous quarter. The company’s quarterly earnings statement for 2Q11 revealed that its net income for the quarter was $329m, marking a steep drop from the $695m it recorded in 1Q11, and an even steeper fall from the $797m made in 2Q10.

Revenue for the quarter was also down 15 per cent to just $4.2bn from $4.9bn generated in the previous quarter, and down ten per cent from $4.6bn in the same quarter of last year.

The recent poor performance of the firm led to a RIM shareholder calling for a major overhaul that may include the sale of the firm. Jaguar Financial said that company should either be sold, or the RIM patent portfolio should be monetised.