RIM compensate for BlackBerry outage with free apps, but is that enough?

Following last week’s major service outages across their BlackBerry handset range, manufacturers RIM are set to give more than $100 worth of free apps to their customers affected by the problems.

Premium apps such as Sims 3, N.O.V.A and Bejeweled will be offered without charge to BlackBerry owners between the 19th of October and the 31st of December, whilst BlackBerry Enterprise customers wil recieve a month’s worth of free technical support too.

“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.”

Considering the huge number of BlackBerry users affected by the outage, and te high price of technical support for the many enterprise customers on RIM’s books, this is a generous and costly compensation package after what must have been a pricey week’s worth of problems for RIM anyway.

After a slow start, RIM handled the outage remarkably well, using social media channels to keep users updated, as well as seeing Lazaridis extend a heartfelt video apology over YouTube.

The timing however, could not have been any worse. Apple mania had kicked in just days before with the launch of the iPhone 4S, and while one of BlackBerry’s key USPs, BBM, was faltering, iOS 5 was introducing iMessage to the Apple-loving masses.

If things were already tough for Canadian phone giants RIM, the past week hasn’t made things any easier.