Is Apple down? Major outages as thousands report apps, iCloud, music offline - updates

There are a number of reports of Apple services being offline this afternoon.

A number of customers are reporting big issues, with error screens and problems accessing the tech giant's services. Downdetector.com has seen a huge surge in people reporting issues with Apple services.

The problems seems to have started around 4.15pm GMT. The company has not issued a statement as of yet and it is not known what has caused the problem.

One person posted on the site: "nothing working for me." While another said: "cant update my phone. cant download apps. pictures wont send. super."

This is a breaking news story and further updates will be posted below.

According to Downdetector, 79 per cent of current reported problems are those using iPhones. Many have commented iMessages are taking a long time to send and that Apple Maps are among the services not working.

15 per cent of complaints are related to the Apple website and a further six per cent relating to the Apple TV service.