RIM to offer all Blackberry users free apps starting October,19

RIM has announced its compensation package for BlackBerry users affected by last week outage, and if you were hoping for a refund then you are going to be disappointed. Instead, RIM is offering a bundle of twelve apps usually collectively priced at over $100 from the BlackBerry App World free, including titles such as SIMS 3 and Vlingo Plus, while enterprise customers will also get a month free Technical Support.

If enterprise users already have a Technical Support contract, they will find an extra month service tacked onto the end of it. Those without will be offered a standalone free month of the enhanced services, with no obligation to continue.

Everyone else will have to wait for RIM to begin to roll out the free apps, which the company says will happen "over the coming weeks" and run until the end of the year. "We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience" RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in a statement. "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."

Whether that will satisfy angry users or indeed prevent them from jumping ship to Android or iOS remains to be seen.

Free Apps:

• 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