BlackBerry free apps as payback

Article by Carol Martindale

(CNN) — BlackBerry customers slammed by last week’s global outage are being offered free apps, not cash, as payback for their troubles.
At least a dozen apps, which would cost about $100 on the BlackBerry App World site, will be made available in the next few weeks, according to a statement released today by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
“We truly appreciate and value our relationship with our customers,” RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis. “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.”
An October 10 failure at a data center caused outages in Europe and elsewhere, RIm said. RIM throttled service to help address the outage, which spread over the next few days to Europe, the Middle East, India, Africa, Latin America and North America. Full service was restored on Thursday, according to the company.
The free apps include: SIMS 3, Bejeweled, N.O.V.A., Texas Hold’em Poker 2, Bubble Bash 2, Photo Editor Ultimate – Ice Cold Apps, DriveSafe.ly Pro, Drive Safe.ly Enterprise, Nobex Radio™ Premium, Shazam Encore, Vlingo Plus and Virtual Assistant.
More apps will be added later, according to the statement. The first ones will become available on Wednesday and they will stay free for the rest of the year.
Business customers also will be offered a free month of technical support.
BlackBerry has approximately 70 million customers.