Research In Motion (RIM) announced today that a selection of apps will be offered free of charge to subscribers. Corporate clients will also receive one month of free technical support, as the company tries to retain customers following one of its worst BlackBerry service disruptions. The apps will be made available to RIM's customers over the coming weeks on BlackBerry App World and will continue to be available until December 31, 2011.

The selections over this period will include the following, with more to come:

- 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

RIM's enterprise customers will also be offered one month of free Technical Support. Current customers will be offered a complimentary one month extension of their existing Technical Support contract, and customers who do not currently have a Technical Support contract will be offered a one month trial of RIM's BlackBerry Technical Support Services - Enhanced Support, free of charge. Additional details about the program and information about how to register will be available at www.blackberry.com/enterpriseoffer.

"We are grateful to our loyal BlackBerry customers for their patience," added Lazaridis. "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."

Last week, many RIM's customers experienced service interruptions and delays over a period of approximately 3 days in Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa, 1.5 days in Latin America and Canada, and 1 day in the United States. As of Thursday, October 13, service levels returned to normal.