PlayBookでandroidアプリが動く?

HUGE NEWS! We’ve been talking about Android Apps running on BlackBerry’s tablet since August 2010 (before the PlayBook was ever announced -jump to minute 52 in this podcast) and today we see that our intuition was dead on, and we know how RIM is going to go abou delivering Android Apps on the QNX-based OS. In addition to announcing the long awaited C C++ Native Development Kit for the PlayBook, RIM announced support for existing BlackBerry apps and Android Apps. Android apps won’t come from Android Marketplace itself, but rather Android developers wil simply have to repackage, code sign and submit their BlackBerry Java and Android apps to BlackBerry App World from where users will be able to download the apps. The Android and BlackBerry OS apps will run within what RIM has dubbed an “app player” on the device. I like the approach RIM took here. It makes a lot of sense. This way they don’t run into any sort o legal issues with android on BlackBerry… rather, Android developers will be signing up as BlackBerry Developers with App World, and distributing built-for-android apps via App World (which kind of makes them BlackBerry apps still, no??). Hopefully we’ll see a ton of Android Developers go through this little extra (and free) step. I’d think it would make sense for Android developers to do this. Read the press release for more information. We’ll digest this news and be back soon with more opinion on it soon!