BlackBerry maker RIM has issued a statement as to why its users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and other parts of the world have struggled with email browsing, and using BBM over the last 2 days. 

In a statement issued to Pocket-lint late on Tuesday night, RIM said:

"The messaging and browsing delays being experienced by BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure. Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested.

"As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible. 

"We apologize for any inconvenience and we will continue to keep you informed."

The comment is the first time in the last 2 days that RIM has said anything other than "we are working on it" and it seems strange that it's taken so long for the company to come up with a more detailed response.

Twitter and social networks have been filling with complaints by avid BlackBerry fans who found their handsets rendered virtually useless, and still useless (unless you want to play Bricks) for close to 48 hours.

BlackBerry first confirmed there was a problem, responding via its official Twitter account with a tweet which read: "Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues. We're investigating, and we apologise for any inconvenience." Followed soon after on Monday with: "Our sincere apologies to all of you affected by today's BlackBerry service issues."

On Tuesday the company would only say:

"Some users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are experiencing messaging and browsing delays. We are working to restore normal service as quickly as possible.  We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused."

After reporting that the service was successfully up and running on Tuesday morning, the service failed again leaving many frustrated. 

The service is still down, and RIM hasn't suggested when service will resume. 

We will keep you posted.

UPDATE: RIM still doesn't have an answer to when emails will be back, blame too many emails

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