CORRECTED - UPDATE 5-BlackBerry maker sheds 5 pct after apps offer
* Shares of RIM drop 5 pct in morning Nasdaq tradeTORONTO, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Shares of Research In Motion dropped more than 5 percent on Monday after it
sought to appease disgruntled BlackBerry customers by offering
free apps and technical support to make up for last week’s
global smartphone outage.Tens of millions of BlackBerry users were left without
mobile email and other messaging for up to four days last week
after a failure at a RIM data center in England triggered a
service disruption across five continents.RIM will offer premium apps worth more than $100 to
customers and a month of technical support for businesses free
of charge, hoping to stem fresh defections from the BlackBerry,
whose market share was already shrinking before the incident.Analysts have said RIM needs to quickly repair the damage
to its image caused by the outage and stem the loss of
corporate customers who are now questioning the reliability of
the BlackBerry.”RIM has responded swiftly but this won’t undo the damage
done to its reputation,” analyst Geoff Blaber at CCS Insight
told Reuters earlier on Monday. “This may go some way to
appeasing customers but what’s critical is that the problem
does not repeat itself.”The stock was trading 5.1 percent lower at $22.75 on the
Nasdaq by 11:30 a.m. It has shed more than 60 percent of its
value since the start of the year.The BlackBerry has in recent years lost market share to
Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s Android system. At the same time it has sought to make
deeper inroads beyond its core corporate base, with a special
focus on younger consumers and in emerging markets.Highlighting the challenges, Apple said it sold 4 million
of its new iPhone 4S in the first three days after launch last
week.”DEEPLY GRATEFUL”RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie told Reuters on Monday
the company wanted to make amends with customers.”This is our way of expressing appreciation for their
patience during the recent service disruptions and a tangible
way of telling them how deeply grateful we are for their
continued business,” he said in a phone interview.Balsillie declined to estimate how much the offer would
cost RIM and said he was unable to say whether RIM might have
to revise its earnings forecast for the current quarter, which
ends in late November.The financial impact could prove sizable if a large enough
portion of RIM’s more than 70 million subscribers take up the
offers.Balsillie said RIM was not running any tests on its network
at the time of the failure and was still investigating the
precise cause of the breakdown, the company’s worst ever.The free apps on offer include games such as Bejeweled, and
premium versions of a translation service and the music
discovery tool Shazam.Richard Levick, who runs a U.S. consultancy that
specializes in crisis management, praised the move but said the
company should have made the announcement last week.”I think it’s a good start, but they are always late,” he
said. “They are always behind the curve.”Francisco Jeronimo, an analysts at IDC, had a different
perspective on the offer. He said the decision was a clever
move by RIM because it would help customers to discover the app
service.He said the company was likely to have struck a deal with
app developers to keep the cost down.”For RIM, this is an interesting way to attract users to
the App World and incentivise them to search and download
apps,” he said.”More important than the offer itself, is that RIM is
showing goodwill and being humble. They recognized the problem,
apologized and now they are compensating their users.”
UPDATE 1-Bank of Canada survey shows businesses less upbeat
* Inflation, capacity pressures tameOTTAWA, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Spooked by the shaky global
economic outlook, Canadian businesses have downgraded their
expectations for sales, hiring and investment but remain mildly
optimistic that modest growth will continue, the Bank of
Canada’s autumn business outlook survey shows.The survey, released on Monday, showed companies expect
sales volumes to grow at roughly the same pace over the next
year as they did last year, the least bullish view expressed in
the survey in 2-1/2 years.Business sentiment in the autumn survey declined from
record highs registered in the bank’s summer survey, but
remained positive across all indicators, according to the
bank’s interviews with senior managers at about 100 companies.The results were not surprising, with the European
sovereign debt crisis weighing on confidence and mixed signals
from the U.S. economy keeping exporters on edge.The overall message from the survey is that there will be
no recession, but no spectacular growth either, analysts said.”Businesses are still clearly anticipating at least modest
growth in the quarters ahead, and positive intentions for
capital expenditures and hiring suggests that this sector of
the economy will continue to power forward the domestic
recovery,” said Emanuella Enenajor, economist at CIBC World
Markets.Businesses have also lowered their expectations for the
inflation rate over the next two years, meaning there is little
pressure on the central bank to raise its key interest rate
from the current ultra-low 1 percent.For the first time in two years, companies see their output
prices rising more slowly than in the past year. Input prices
are still expected to rise, but far fewer of the managers
surveyed held that view than was the case three months ago.Jonathan Basile, director of economics at Credit Suisse
Canada, said the Bank of Canada was unlikely to show any
interest in monetary tightening on its Oct. 25 rate decision
date, given the tame outlook for core inflation and no sign of
labor shortages, which would pressure wage inflation.Canada’s primary securities dealers, polled on Oct. 7,
forecast that the Bank of Canada will not raise interest rates
until September 2012.. Markets, however, are pricing
in the possibility of a quarter-point rate cut by the second
quarter of next year.The balance of opinion on future sales, the percentage of
companies expecting faster growth minus the percentage
expecting slower growth, fell sharply to 6 data points in the
autumn survey from 20 previously.The balance of opinion on intentions to increase employment
slipped to 38 from 53, and on intentions to increase investment
it fell to 22 from 30. Indicators of capacity pressures also
moved downward.On inflation, 41 percent of businesses surveyed said they
expect the inflation rate to stay between 1 and 2 percent,
compared with just 18 percent in the summer survey. Forty-seven
percent said they expected inflation to be 2-3 percent, down
from 62 percent previously. Overall, 88 percent see inflation
within the central bank’s comfort zone of 1-3 percent.A separate bank survey of senior loan officers showed
business lending conditions eased overall in the third quarter
but to a lesser degree than in the second quarter.
NRC delays reactor certification to study Japan damage
By Jim BrummWILMINGTON, N.C., Oct 13 (Reuters) - U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission certification of new reactor technology
has been delayed by the agency’s evaluation of the earthquake
and tsunami damage to Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant in
March, NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said on Thursday.He said the full commission is still expected to act on the
final certification of Westinghouse Electric’s AP1000 design by
year-end, which would make the certification effective in
2012.The NRC staff has been analyzing the Fukushima Daiichi
plant after the earthquake and tsunami and making
recommendations for future NRC action aimed at averting such an
accident in the United States.NRC consideration of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s Economic
Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) has been delayed until
next year, Burnell said in a telephone interview.The NRC staff is in the process of preparing a final rule
for both reactors and the AP100 has priority over the ESBWR for
the commission’s available resources, he said.Burnell said the NRC staff would update GE Hitachi soon on
the ESBWR’s certification status, which now appears to have
been delayed at least six months from “the June to September
time frame” seen earlier this year by Danny Roderick, senior
vice president of nuclear plant projects at GE Hitachi’s
headquarters in Wilmington, North Carolina.Noting the company has worked closely with the NRC on
licensing the ESBWR since 2005, GE Hitachi spokesman Michael
Tetuan said the company has completed its required licensing
work and is looking forward to receiving final design
certification from the NRC.GE Hitachi is owned 60 percent by General Electric Co and 40 percent by Japan’s Hitachi Ltd .If the AP1000 certification is effective early next year,
this would allow Southern Co to stay on schedule to
begin producing electricity with the reactors built by Toshiba
Corp’s Westinghouse in 2016 and 2017, Southern
spokesman Steve Higginbottom said on Thursday.He said that schedule is based on the utility’s expectation
it will get an NRC license for the two reactors around year’s
end and noted that license is dependent on NRC certification of
the reactors built by Toshiba Corp’s Westinghouse.The agency has already given Southern permission to perform
limited construction in preparation for the new reactors at its
Vogtle power plant near Augusta, Georgia, Higginbottom noted.Meanwhile, Michigan’s DTE Energy has begun site
preparation for a GE Hitachi ESBWR next to its existing Fermi 2
plant south of Detroit.
EMERGING MARKETS-Mexico, Chile pesos hit 3-wk highs on EU hopes
* Mexico’s peso firms 1.5 pct, Chile’s peso up 2 pctBy Jean Luis Arce and Rachel UrangaMEXICO CITY, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Mexico’s and Chile’s pesos
firmed to three-week highs on Wednesday as hopes Europe will
soon approve a plan to bolster its bailout fund boosted riskier
assets around the globe.Slovakia is the last country in the 17-member euro zone
that still needs to approve a plan to strengthen the euro
zone’s rescue fund.The Slovak parliament rejected on Tuesday the plan to
bolster the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), but
parties began talks with the opposition to reach a deal on
ratifying the plan.”They will end up approving it in a second vote and
investors are giving them the benefit of the doubt,” said
Gabriel Lozano, an economist at Santander in Mexico City.Mexico’s peso gained more than 1.6 percent to
13.1780 per dollar, its strongest since Sept. 19. The Chilean
peso bid 2 percent stronger on Wednesday to 499 per
dollar, also a three-week high.Mexico’s peso has gained 7 percent from near a two-year low
last week, while Chile’s peso rocketed back from a one-year low
as fears eased that Europe’s debt troubles could spark another
global financial crisis.Still, traders were cautious that recent gains could
reverse if Europe is unable to deliver on expectations of a
bolder new plan to shore up banks hurt by the debt crisis.”We are seeing demand for emerging markets today,” said
Francisco Diez, director of emerging market trading at RBC
Capital Markets in New York. “But sentiment is changing day to
day,” he said.Colombia’s peso gained 1 percent to 1896 per
dollar, trading at its strongest in two weeks.Peru’s sol surged to its highest in more than
three years, but pulled back to 2.7250 per dollar, still 0.18
percent firmer.High metals prices are supporting exports while investors
have become increasingly convinced left-wing President Ollanta
Humala, who took office in July, will not impose major reforms
that could discourage foreign investment in Peru.”Positive trade results together with evidence of strong
capital inflows from foreign direct investment still support
our forecast for the (sol) to remain strong,” Felipe Hernandez,
an analyst at RBS Securities, wrote in a note.Brazilian markets were closed for a holiday. The real had
gained ground for six straight sessions through Tuesday.
