As a way of thanking its loyal BlackBerry users for their patience during the service disruption that recently affected a number of countries, Research In Motion is offering free download of a handful of premium apps worth a total value of $100. These apps will be available starting this Wednesday, October 19 and will be up for download until the end of the year.
Initial apps included for free download 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 Radioâ„¢ Premium – Nobex
- Shazam Encore – Shazam
- Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – Vlingo
More free premium apps will be available in the coming weeks. Enterprise customers are also entitled to a month free of 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.
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. As of Thursday, October 13, service levels returned to normal.
“œWe are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience,” said RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. “œWe 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.”
[RIM]