Apple's iTunes, App Store back online after 12-hour outage due to internal error

Apple's iTunes and App Store came back online on Wednesday afternoon after an unusually long service disruption that the tech major blamed on an internal technical error.

The rare 12-hour outage began a little before 2:30 pm on Wednesday, after which users took to Twitter to vent their frustration at being unable to access the popular mobile apps store and online content service, using hashtags such as #itunesdown and #appstoresdown.

Apple updated its status page at 2:34 am on Thursday to show that the disrupted services, including the Mac App Store and iBooks, were now functioning normally and attributed the outage to an internal Domain Name System error.

The App Store and iTunes form the centrepiece of Apple's mobile user experience and are also a rich source of revenue for the California-based tech company, which takes a cut of app downloads and paid content, including music and videos.

Revenue from services, which encompasses everything from iTunes and the App Store to licensing, amounted to almost US $4.8 billion in its first quarter, or more than 6 per cent of overall sales.

Shares of Apple, which apologised to users publicly, closed 1.8 per cent lower at US $122.24 on the US markets on Wednesday.

"Service outages happen from time to time and we view this as a very minor event," FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives told Reuters.

Apple said its iCloud Mail and iCloud Account & Sign In were also affected until about 6:30 pm.

The outage came just days after Apple's highly anticipated unveiling of the Apple Watch, its entry into the fast-expanding wearable devices sphere. The Apple Store website was shut briefly on Monday, a customary practise ahead of a major event.

A similar outage occurred in early September, according to appleinsider.com.

(Reuters)