Millions of people whose BlackBerry smartphones were affected by last week's outages will be compensated with $100 (£63) worth of apps from the company's app store.
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) said yesterday that each of the affected customers would be able to download the apps – including the games The Sims 3 and Bejeweled – from Wednesday, as the company attempts to restore its damaged reputation.
Millions of BlackBerry owners from the Middle East to the US were unable to send emails, browse the web or use BlackBerry Messenger last week after a problem at RIM's network centre in Slough sent a ripple effect worldwide.
Those affected will be able to download the premium apps from the BlackBerry App World until 31 December as "an expression of appreciation for their patience", RIM said.
Mike Lazaridis, co-chief executive of RIM, said: "We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience. We have apologised to our customers and we will work tirelessly to restore their confidence.
"We are taking immediate and aggressive steps to help prevent something like this from happening again."
RIM will also offer customers a one-month extension to technical support contracts. Enterprise customers and those who do not have a technical support contract will be offered a month's free helpline support.
The form of compensation may go some way to winning over customers who vented their anger at the Canada-based phone-maker last week. Comments on the BlackBerry blog CrackBerry appeared to welcome the offer. "Finally! They listened to us, thanks RIM! And thanks to CrackBerry for accommodating our complaint," said kelom.
The compensation package is likely to be costly for RIM if millions of customers take advantage of the offer. But those who download more apps may be more likely to stay with the platform – an important step as RIM tries to stave off defections to Google's Android, Apple's iPhone and the expected Windows Phone devices from Nokia. It has been losing customers in the US – and while it has grown its customer base, those are precisely the areas that were worst affected by the outage.
Analysts had previously forecast that RIM could be in line for a $100m payout to up to 70 million customers worldwide, based on a $5-a-month fee for the BlackBerry services.
"The total amount RIM should pay to refund its customers would be about $12m a day," Malik Saadi, an analyst at Informa, calculated last week. "This amount does not take into account liability fees for loss of data or any related legal issues. This could mean RIM paying over $100m, and this amount could escalate for every subsequent day the service is out of action."
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