Huge outage hits Apple storefronts, including iTunes, iBooks, App Store

Have you been struggling to download books or apps to your Apple device this morning? You’re not alone.

According to a status update on the company’s website, iTunes, the Mac App Store, App Store, and the iBooks Store are experiencing unplanned downtime. The Next Web is independently reporting that TestFlight, the company’s service for app beta testers, also seems to be affected.

Users in the U.S. and U.K., as well as Armenia, Australia, Brazil, Bolivia, Bulgaria, Poland, Serbia, South Africa,  Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Greece, Mexico, New Zealand, Thailand, and elsewhere started posting about issues on social media early this morning, when broken and malformed pages began appearing on the App Store’s Web interface. The outage has been trending on Twitter under the hashtag #appstoredown.

In a statement issued this morning, Apple said users “may be unable to make purchases” until the cause is isolated and resolved . Users have also been unable to download or update apps; last night, two Digital Trends writers experienced mild issues while trying to download apps from the App Store.

The most recent update from Apple’s support team blames the outage on an internal server error. “We’re working to make all of the services available to customers as soon as possible, and we thank everyone for their patience,” a spokesperson said.

We’ll keep you updated as we learn more info, and alert you when the stores are back in working order.