Research in Motion (RIM) came under heavy fire after three days during which its BlackBerry smartphones were afflicted with network problems on a global scale.
Calls for compensation came from many disgruntled users and RIM has finally decided on what form this will take; free applications from the BlackBerry App World service.
Around £63 worth of free apps will be dished out to all BlackBerry users who choose to download them from the 19th of October.
The apps range in individual price and types, from games including The Sims 3 to photo editing apps and translation tools. RIM is clearly hoping that there will be a broad enough range to satisfy its varied audience of users, although there will doubtlessly be those who consider a few free apps irrelevant after the inconvenience caused by the outage.
What makes RIM particularly susceptible to criticism following any problems is the fact that it has become the go-to brand for anyone in business who wants to communicate with colleague, do deals, send emails and access the web.
When many of these core functions were taken away by system failures in October social networking sites like Twitter were quickly ablaze with angry comments, not only from average users but also from celebrities and luminaries of the business world.
Such a high-profile catastrophe as compounded because many perceived RIM as having failed to communicate with customers during the recovery process, which means some free applications might not be enough to stop thousands of people ditching their BlackBerry and turning to a rival manufacturer such as Apple.
Of course three days is a relatively brief period for intermittent service to occur and it was not a complete blackout, with many corporate BlackBerry users remaining unaffected. Many will stick with their BlackBerry smartphone because they love the physical full QWERTY keyboards on models like the Torch and Bold, which cannot be found on alternatives like the iPhone. Typing precision is a key selling point, particularly if the user is a heavy email user.
If you want to download the free apps for your BlackBerry then you will have until the end of 2011 to do so.
RIM head Mike Lazarides spoke out about the problems which occurred and the compensation being offered. He said that the company had spent over a decade creating a trusting relationship with its millions of customers and that he wanted to assure them that they could rely on RIM to deliver quality products and services well into the future.
For some the apologies will be too little and too late, but the BlackBerry phone range still has some of the best high-end handsets around, with email functionality and text input excellence that is difficult to match on pure touch phones. Indeed RIM is embracing the future with new models like the Curve Touch and Bellagio, so if you want a combination of physical keypads and tactile interfaces a BlackBerry can still be a viable option.
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