The online Apple Store briefly was inaccessible for customers, displaying the famous "Be right back" message for a period of time on Monday, a usual indicator of updates or changes to the store, but in this case may have been just downtime for maintenance.
Apple periodically takes down its online store for a few reasons, with it usually being either for maintenance or to roll out new or updated hardware to its website. Outside of rumors relating to unreleased hardware, there is no immediate sign as to what Apple will change until the store becomes accessible once more.
Within the hour of going down, the store came back to life, but with no apparent changes made to the store listings.
In the case of Monday's downtime, only the store pages were unavailable for viewing. Usually, this could mean price changes for the company's products, a new sale or promotion, or large-scale updates to other items sold by the iPhone maker online could have been made.
AppleInsider is continuing to investigate the circumstances of the downtime.