BlackBerry owners frustrated by last week’s service outage—the longest in RIM’s history—will have access to “a selection of premium apps worth a total value of more than US $100,” according to a company press release.
The apps will become available starting on Wednesday, with additional titles added to the list over the next four weeks.
The first round of apps include the following:
• 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
They’ll be available as free downloads until the end of the year and, again, additional titles will be added over the coming weeks. As for RIM’s enterprise customers, they’ll also get a free month of technical support.
This make-good offer from RIM is obviously not the monetary reimbursement some users had hoped for. As our own Harry McCracken points out on his Technologizer blog, “As I read that list, I suffer from pangs of cognitive dissonance. Corporate E-mail is important stuff, and delivering it reliably is utterly core to RIM’s mission and reputation. Free poker games feel like an off-topic way of making up for an e-mail outage. What would be more appropriate? Well, how about cash?”
RIM’s developer conference takes place this week, so it’ll be interesting to see if the recent outage overshadows the company’s announcements about new products and future plans.
MORE: RIM Apologizes: ‘Not Even Close’ on BlackBerry Uptime This Week