While Apple fans around the globe are lining up to get their hands on the iPhone 5, beleaguered BlackBerry manufacturer RIM is suffering yet another blow, as it confirms a global outage that will likely encourage even more of its customers to jump ship in favour of the greener pastures of iOS, Android, and Windows 8.

The failure has left some users in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, including those using corporate accounts, without access to their emails and messages.

“Some users in Europe, Middle East & Africa are experiencing issues with their BlackBerry service,” RIM confirmed on its BlackBerry UK Twitter account.

“We are investigating and apologise for any inconvenience,” it added.

There’s no word yet on the extent of the failure or when a fix can be expected.

"As far as we can tell all Blackberry services have gone down. This is a RIM issue and is affecting all devices across all networks," a Vodafone accounts manager has told reporters.

"We are aware that some customers are experiencing problems using BlackBerry services such as email, internet and BBM. RIM are working on fixing this as a priority and we are in regular communication with them. We expect updates shortly,” the network added.

The outage comes almost a year after a days-long failure left BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South America unable to access their emails or messages.