RIM offers 12 free apps after three-day BlackBerry outage
Research In Motion offered up a handful of free apps on Monday in an effort to make up for three days' worth of BlackBerry email and messaging outages that left many without email access last week.
RIM said the bundle of 12 selected apps had a value of more than $100.
"We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience," RIM's co-Chief Executive Mike Lazaridis said in an email announcing the app giveaway. "We have apologized 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."
The email and messaging outages struck Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Canada, Mexico, the U.S. and parts of South America. They ended Thursday -- the day before Apple's iPhone 4S went on sale in stores.
RIM said its offer of the free apps, which will be made available in the "coming weeks" and until Dec. 31, was "an expression of appreciation for their patience during the recent service disruptions."
The BlackBerry apps RIM will give away are:
- SIMS 3 - Electronic Arts
- Bejeweled - Electronic Arts
- N.O.V.A. - Gameloft
- Texas Hold’em Poker 2 - Gameloft
- Bubble Bash 2 - Gameloft
- Photo Editor Ultimate - Ice Cold Apps
- DriveSafe.ly Pro - iSpeech.org
- iSpeech Translator Pro - iSpeech.org
- Drive Safe.ly Enterprise - iSpeech.org
- Nobex Radio™ Premium - Nobex
- Shazam Encore - Shazam
- Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant - Vlingo
The Canadian smartphone and tablet maker is also offering its business customers one month of free technical support. For those who already are customers of RIM's technical support service, a free month will be added to their contracts. Businesses looking for more information on the technical support offer should visit www.blackberry.com/enterpriseoffer.
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-- Nathan Olivarez-Giles
Photo: A salesman displays a BlackBerry mobile phone to customers next to dummy handsets at a shop in Jammu, India. Credit: Mukesh Gupta / Reuters
