BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has started the process of winning back customers that were left unhappy following last week’s massive worldwide service outage – by offering free ‘premium apps’.

Despite millions of users across the world being without services from Monday to Thursday last week RIM has yet to talk about compensation. Its co-CEOs dodged the question during a conference call with journalists to discuss the service outage.

RIM has however decided to offer "premium apps worth a total value of more than $100" free of charge to its users, "as an expression of appreciation for their patience during the recent service disruptions," the company said in a statement.

As of Wednesday this week the following apps will be available free of charge on RIM’s BlackBerry App World:

  • 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

The company has promised more to come. The promotion will run until December 31.

The first thing that jumps out about the list is that there isn’t a huge amount there to satisfy an enterprise user. Beyond the games on offer there are a couple that could be useful for a business traveller, particularly the speech translation apps such as Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant – maybe RIM is worried about the impact of the introduction of Siri on the new iPhone 4S?

RIM clearly agrees and has added a few extras for enterprise customers; they will receive one month of free Technical Support. Current customers will be offered one month extension of their existing Technical Support contract while customers not signed up to a Technical Support contract can get a one-month trial.

Will this be enough to keep BlackBerry users happy? Not if our survey is anything to go by.

CBR last week revealed that nearly 20% of BlackBerry users were already in the process of moving to another platform before the service disruption, while a further 34% think they or their company should now move away from BlackBerry as a result of the outage.