RIM woos customers with free apps to stay on their good side

In a bid to reach out to BlackBerry loyalists who have still stuck around with the service after the recent outage that hit the community, RIM has decided that free apps are the way to go.  Research In Motion announced today that a selection of premium apps worth a total value of more than US $100 (about Rs. 4,900) will be offered free of charge to subscribers as an expression of appreciation for their patience during the recent service disruptions.

Some freebies on the way

“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): 

• 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 Radio™ Premium - Nobex
• Shazam Encore - Shazam
• Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant - Vlingo

In case these apps are not available for you on BlackBerry App World or are still showing a price, they will be made available for free over the coming weeks starting Wednesday the 19th of October and will continue to be available until December 31, 2011.

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.”

RIM is trying its best to stay in good books with their rather extensive user base and offering up freebies is certainly one way to do it.