RIM offers BlackBerry customers $100 worth of apps after outage

Research In Motion (RIM) has pledged to give away a selection of applications worth more than $100 to customers affected by the widespread outages to its BlackBerry services last week.

The Canadian smartphone maker revealed 12 premium applications that will be made available to download for free from the BlackBerry App World over a four-week period from 19 October.

These include voice recognition software Vlingo Plus, BlackBerry photo editing app Photo Editor Ultimate and several gaming titles, with more apps to be announced, said RIM.

Founder and co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis thanked the firm's 70 million global BlackBerry customers again for their patience.

"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," he said.

"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."

The outage, which affected European customers for over three days and also hit users in the Middle East, Africa and the Americas, was caused by a switch failure that brought down a server at RIM's Slough datacentre.

The interrupted service in Europe then caused a backlog of messages to develop in other countries across the globe, Lazaridis said last Thursday.

Earlier in the day he took to the web to apologise personally for the problems, admitting the firm had reacted too slowly to the issue and failed to keep its customers informed in a satisfactory manner.

"Since launching BlackBerry in 1999 it's been my goal to provide reliable, real-time communications around the world," he said. "We did not deliver on that goal this week. Not even close. You expect better from us and I expect better from us."

While the offer of free premium apps from RIM will be welcomed, it's unlikely to change customers' increasingly hostile attitudes towards the company, which has always prided itself on its reliability and security.

Rsearch from comparison site Kelkoo on Friday found that 19 per cent of existing BlackBerry users are already thinking about moving to another manufacturer, while 42 per cent will think about moving when they next change their handset.

The iPhone was the most popular choice for those thinking about switching from their BlackBerry as Apple continues to entice users away from RIM.