BlackBerry Outage: RIM Offers Premium Apps for Free

Following service interruptions last week, Research In Motion (RIM) announced today that a selection of premium apps worth a total value of more than US $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, subject to certain terms and conditions. Last week, many customers experienced service interruptions and delays over a period of approximately 3 days in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, 1.5 days in Latin America and Canada, and 1 day in the United States.
BlackBerry Appworld BlackBerry Appworld

Global teams worked around the clock to contain the issue and minimize the impact to customers as much as possible. As of Thursday, October 13, service levels returned to normal.

“Our global network supports the communications needs of more than 70 million customers,” said RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. “We truly appreciate and value our relationship with our customers.  We’ve worked hard to earn their trust over the past 12 years, and we’re committed to providing the high standard of reliability they expect, today and in the future.”

The complete selection of premium apps will become available to download at BlackBerry App World over a period of four weeks beginning Wednesday, October 19th.  The selections over this period will include the following (with more to come):

  1. SIMS 3 – Electronic Arts
  2. Bejeweled – Electronic Arts
  3. N.O.V.A. – Gameloft
  4. Texas Hold’em Poker 2 – Gameloft
  5. Bubble Bash 2 – Gameloft
  6. Photo Editor Ultimate – Ice Cold Apps
  7. DriveSafe.ly Pro – iSpeech.org
  8. iSpeech Translator Pro – iSpeech.org
  9. Drive Safe.ly Enterprise – iSpeech.org
  10. Nobex Radio™ Premium – Nobex
  11. Shazam Encore – Shazam
  12. Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo

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 Lazaridis. “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.”