In a bid to pacify angry customers, Research In Motion announced today that a selection of apps worth a total value of more than $100 will be offered free of charge to subscribers "as an expression of appreciation for their patience during the recent service disruptions".
The apps will be made available to customers over the coming weeks on BlackBerry App World and will continue to be available until December 31, 2011.
“Our global network supports the communications needs of more than 70 million customers,” said the RIM Co-CEO, Mr Mike Lazaridis. “We truly appreciate and value our relationship with our customers."
Last week, many customers experienced service interruptions and delays over a period of three days in Europe, West Asia, India and Africa, 1.5 days in Latin America and Canada, and one day in the United States. Global teams worked around the clock to contain the issue and minimise the impact to customers as much as possible. As of October 13, service levels returned to normal.
The complete selection of premium apps will become available to download at BlackBerry App World over a period of four weeks beginning October 19.
The selections over this period will include SIMS 3 - Electronic Arts, Bejeweled - Electronic Arts, N.O.V.A. - Gameloft, Photo Editor Ultimate - Ice Cold Apps, DriveSafe.ly Pro - iSpeech.org
RIM’s enterprise customers will also be offered one month of free Technical Support. Current customers will be offered a complimentary one month extension of their existing Technical Support contract, and customers who do not currently have a Technical Support contract will be offered a one month trial of RIM’s BlackBerry Technical Support Services - Enhanced Support, free of charge. Additional details about the program and information about how to register will be available at www.blackberry.com/enterpriseoffer .
“We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience,” added Mr Lazaridis. “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.”