Blackberry smartphones are pictured in this illustration photo taken in Berlin
Blackberry smartphones are pictured in this illustration photo taken in Berlin, October 13, 2011. REUTERS

RIM - BlackBerry's maker - announced Monday that more than $100 worth of premium apps will be available for free for BlackBerry users who were affected by the outages last week.

BlackBerry are calling the offering an "expression of appreciation" for "patience during the recent service disruptions." These apps will be available up until the end of the year.

Mike Lazaridis said: "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."

The apps will be available over a period of four weeks beginning Wednesday and will include:

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<sup>TM Premium - Nobex
Shazam Encore - Shazam
Vlingo Plus: Virtual Assistant - Vlingo

Business users will also receive one month's free technical support and those who already have it will be given an extra month on top of their contract.

This comes after last week's outages around the world in which RIM had three days of complaints that BlackBerry's Internet services are unavailable. Services returned to normal Thursday.

BlackBerry