Research in Motion said customers affected by outages last week smartphones will be able to download free applications

million people living on BlackBerry smartphones have been affected by power cuts last week, will be compensated $ 100 (£ 63) worth of applications from the App Store for the company.

BlackBerry maker Research

in Motion (RIM) announced Monday that each of the affected customers would be able to download the applications - including games Sims 3 and Bejeweled - from Wednesday, as the company tries to restore its damaged reputation under siege.

million BlackBerry users in the Middle East United States unable to send emails, surf the web or use of BlackBerry Messenger last week after a heart problem RIM's network in Slough sent repercussions around the world.

Those affected can download premium applications BlackBerry App World as "an expression of thanks for your patience" until December 31, RIM said.

Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM, said: .. "We are grateful to our loyal customers for their patience, we have BlackBerry apologized to our customers and work hard to restore confidence

compensation is likely to be costly for RIM, as millions of customers could benefit from the offer. But customers who download more applications are more likely to stay with the platform - a milestone that RIM is trying to avoid defections to Google's Android, Apple iPhone and Windows Phone devices expected from Nokia. It has been losing customers in the U.S. - and while it has increased its customer base in Europe, Middle East and Africa, are precisely the areas that were most affected by the outage

analysts had predicted that RIM could be online for the price of $ 100 million to no more than 70 million customers around the world on the basis of $ 5 per month for BlackBerry service charges.