BlackBerry service outage in U.S., Asia, Europe

RIM has managed to bring most of its BlackBerry email service back online, but starting last night and through the early hours of the morning, email delivery was delayed or intermittent for North American users. Reports of outages have also come in from China, London, Canada and other far-off locales. While RIM said the problem is "currently under review," most of the issues seem to be resolved according to wireless carriers. Of course, there is now an estimated six to seven hour backlog of email messages that need to go out and RIM said it will deliver the messages in stages, so many will still experience delays throughout the day. RIM just reported its net income for Q4 saw a sharp spike thanks to strong sales of its consumer-oriented handset, the Pearl.

For more on the BlackBerry outage:
- see this report from the WSJ (sub. req.)