BlackBerry
Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, will offer free apps worth about $100 to customers as apology for a three-day services outage last week. REUTERS

It's the least Research in Motion (RIM) could do for its global customers impacted by the three-day outage of BlackBerry mobile services including messenger and email. The company said it will offer BlackBerry free apps -- an apology of sorts -- hoping to make amends for the trouble customers experienced throughout the world last week.

BlackBerry free apps will be available for download from October 19 through December 31, the company said Monday. The free premium apps are worth about $100.

Canada-based Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) is the maker of the BlackBerry and provider of BlackBerry mobile device services. BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina experienced outages and delays with messenges and emails for days before the problem spread to North America and the U.S.

RIM said the problems were caused by a core switch failure inside its network. The problem frustrated hunreds of thousands of BlackBerry customers after it lasted for three days. RIM has struggled in recent years, losing smartphone marketshare to the Apple iPhone and smartphones using the Android operating system.

RIM hopes to appease many of its 70 million global customers with the free premium BlackBerry apps including, SIMS 3, Bejeweled, N.O.V.A., Texas Hold'em Poker 2, Bubble Bash 2, Photo Editor Ultimate, DriveSafe.ly Pro, iSpeech Translator Pro, Drive Safe.ly Enterprise, Nobex Radio Premium, Shazam Encore, and Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant.

Additionally, enterprise customers, or Technical Support customers, who already subscribe to the service will get a free month of technical support at no charge. Those who are not current Technical Support customers can get a free complimentary month of Enhanced Technical Support by signing up. For more information, BlackBerry customers can visit blackberry.com/enterpriseoffer.com.

We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience, RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in a statement. 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.

Iphone Smartphone India Argentina