Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry phone, said Thursday that it has fixed the problem that left BlackBerry users unable to send or receive emails on their phones.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company said in a statement that some customers may still experience delays as email queues are processed. RIM is continuing to investigate the cause of the issue and apologizes for any inconvenience.

The BlackBerry outage only affected the email service on the phone, not the phone service, browsing and PIN-to-PIN messaging.

The email outage affected almost all BlackBerry users, regardless of their carrier, in the North America region.

According to the Canadian Press, the last major BlackBerry outage was in February 2008, , when an upgrade to the wireless system appeared to have been behind a three-hour service disruption affecting millions of users in North America.

The company is scheduled to report its third-quarter financial results after markets close later today.

RIMM shares were down 97 cents or 1.5 percent to $63.70 a share in later afternoon trading on the Nasdaq in New York.

Blackberry Software Down