TORONTO — Trying to make amends for massive outages last week, Research In Motion (RIM) on Monday promised BlackBerry users free premium apps and a month of technical support. But the apology is unlikely to placate miffed customers, many of whom are considering whether to part with the tarnished brand in favor of more popular devices such as Apple's newest iPhone.
Co-CEO Jim Balsillie acknowledged in an interview that RIM has come under intense pressure. Even so, he defended RIM's handling of the crisis, the company's worst outage ever.
The Canadian company said it will give BlackBerry users free apps worth more than $100. The apps will be available over the coming weeks on BlackBerry App World. They include iSpeech Translator, Bejeweled and Texas Hold'em Poker 2. The offer runs until the end of the year.
For its enterprise customers, Research in Motion will offer a month of free technical support.
Last week's blackout interrupted email and Internet services for tens of millions of users around the world and left RIM executives apologizing profusely days later.
"This is something we would like to offer as our form of thanks. It's $100 worth of premium apps. It's a substantial offer to our 70 million users around the world," Balsillie said.
Balsillie and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis came under fire last week, when they failed to talk publicly about the outages until Thursday morning, the fourth day of the service interruption.
Chris Allen, a 26-year-old cable technician in Fall River, Mass., said he was happy to get free apps for his personal BlackBerry but thinks the offer will miss the mark with core users.
"Most of the people that use BlackBerrys are business people and all they care about is: 'Does it work?' " Allen said.
Allen is pretty sure he'll get another BlackBerry when his phone contract is up next year, and the outage didn't change that.
"There's nothing that can beat a BlackBerry for productivity," Allen said.
In the Indian capital of New Delhi, Vandana Mehra, who works for the World Bank, thought the offer of free apps was "kind of ludicrous." The apps already on her phone tend to crash, and she doesn't use them much. The 46-year-old depends on her BlackBerry for communications and Web surfing, so the outage irritated her.
Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. in New York, said RIM had to figure out what was wrong before announcing anything. Misek said it was just the latest in a string of problems for RIM, which has faced product delays, poor reviews and disappointing sales. RIM's stock is down more than 80 percent from its high three years ago.
Misek said much of RIM's future depends on it releasing BlackBerrys with the company's new QNX operating system, designed to compete with iPhones and Android phones. RIM has delayed the launch of QNX phones for months, but Balsillie suggested there could be an announcement Tuesday when Lazaridis speaks at an apps-development conference in San Francisco.
Balsillie said the new software "leapfrogs the mobile industry" and positions RIM for the next decade.
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