App Store, iTunes outage cost Apple $34 million

Yesterday's global App Store outage cost Apple $34 million, according to International Business Times UK.

The disruption, which Apple blamed on an internal DNS error, left users in over 40 countries unable to download anything from iTunes and the iBook Store, as well as the App Store on iOS and Mac.

There were also some unconfirmed reports Apple Stores were having to process card payments manually, after card machines stopped working and Wi-Fi in the stores was also knocked offline.

Working from Apple's quarterly profit report, published in January, IB Times worked out the company makes in the region of £1.6 million (AU$3 million) per hour in revenue from its online stores (you can read the full calculation here).

Over the course of the 11-hour outage, this equated to about £17.6 million (AU$34 million) in lost revenue.

While this may seem a rather large figure, and would be a very serious issue for most businesses, it's comparatively small change for Apple.

On January 27, the company reported record quarterly profits of US$18 billion - the highest figure recorded by any company ever.

That's not to say no one will have been hurt by the downtime. Developers will have seen a much more significant impact on their turnover during yesterday's 11-hour pause in business, although how seriously will depend on their.

Apple said last night the problem is now fixed, and PC Pro has successfully downloaded an app this morning, but do let us know if you're still experiencing any problems.

This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk