Research In Motion (RIM) Co-Chief Executive Officer Jim Balsillie arrives at the annual general meeting of shareholders in Waterloo July 12, 2011.MIKE CASSESE
The co-CEO of Research In Motion says the BlackBerry maker doesn't know yet how what the final price tag will be for last week's global e-mail, text and Internet outage.
Jim Balsillie says the Waterloo, Ont., company hasn't calculated the cost of offering BlackBerry users $100 in free apps and doesn't know yet how it will impact its earnings.
One analyst has estimated that if RIM were to compensate all carriers and customers for the down time of the BlackBerry network, its earnings would be negatively affected by three to five cents per share in the current quarter — a total of about $26 million.
Mr. Balsillie also says that so far wireless carriers have not asked him for compensation for the outage, which affected areas such as Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America for varying lengths of time.
He says the free apps to consumers actually cost $5, $10 and $15.
Mr. Balsillie defended how RIM communicated the outage to the public, saying every minute doing public relation is time not spent fixing the problem.