Apple says App Store, other services resume after three hours

Customers stand beneath an Apple logo at the Apple store in Grand Central station in New York City, July 21, 2015. REUTERS/Mike Segar

(Reuters) - Apple Inc said App Store, Apple Music, iTunes Store and some other services are back online, after a more than three hour outage. The company did not provide details but said only some users were affected on Tuesday. The last time that Apple services were affected this long was in March, when iTunes and the App Store came back online after a mammoth 12-hour outage. In checks by Reuters on several Apple sites in Asia, Europe and North and South America all issues with the services appeared resolved. The problems seemed to have started just before 10 a.m. ET, and the services resumed around 1:15 p.m. ET according to a timeline on Apple's U.S. support page. The problems started just before Apple's radio station Beats 1 was supposed to reveal the nominations for MTV's 2015 Video Music Awards. MTV announced on Monday that the nominations would be aired exclusively on the station. Apple Insider, a tech news blog, said the disruption was caused likely by excess traffic associated with the announcement. "We are investigating and will update the status as more information becomes available," Apple had said earlier on the support site. Apple, which is scheduled to report its third-quarter results later on Tuesday, was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Anya George Tharakan and Lehar Maan in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr)