Shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion fell more than 5 percent in morning trade on Monday after the company sought to appease disgruntled customers by offering free apps and technical support.

Millions of BlackBerry users were left without mobile email and other messaging for up to four days last week after a failure at a RIM data center in England spread disruption across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India and later North and South America.

RIM on Monday said it would offer premium apps worth more than $100 and a month of technical support for businesses free of charge as it sought to stem defections.

The financial impact of the offer could be sizable if a large enough portion of RIM's more than 70 million subscribers take up the offers.

Analysts have said the company faces a wider problem of repairing the damage to its image after the outage and loss of corporate customers who no longer think they can rely on the BlackBerry.

RIM has responded swiftly but this won't undo the damage done to its reputation, analyst Geoff Blaber at CCS Insight told Reuters earlier on Monday. This may go some way to appeasing customers but what's critical is that the problem does not repeat itself.

Richard Levick, who runs a U.S. consultancy that specializes in crisis management, praised the move but said the company should have made the announcement last week.

I think it's a good start, but they are always late, he said. They are always behind the curve.

The stock was trading 5.3 percent lower at $22.70 on the Nasdaq by 11am. It has lost more than 60 percent of its value since the start of the year.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp, Pav Jordan, Kate Holton and Tarmo Virki)

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