Research In Motion has just dropped a pretty major bombshell about its PlayBook tablet. Rumours were heard before, but now it’s official: the PlayBook, which runs QNX, will be able to run Android applications. On top of that, and less surprisingly, support for BlackBerry Java applications has also been added, as well as a native C/C++ SDK alongside the already supported HTML5/AIR/Flash environments.
The support for Android applications is most intriguing. It’s going to work like this: something RIM calls an application player for Android can be downloaded from BlackBerry App World. Developers can repackage their Android applications and have them signed and submitted to the App World. It works the same way for BlackBerry Java applications. Both of these players will run in a sandbox for added security.
“The BlackBerry PlayBook is an amazing tablet. The power that we have embedded creates one of the most compelling app experiences available in a mobile computing device today,” said Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s president anc co-CEO, “The upcoming addition of BlackBerry Java and Android apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook on BlackBerry App World will provide our users with an even greater choice of apps and will also showcase the versatility of the platform.”
Aside from support for HTML5, Flash, and AIR, RIM is now also adding a native SDK, called… Native Development Kit. With this, developer can build “high-performance, multi-threaded, native C/C++ applications” using the GNU toolchains. Programmable shaders in hardware-accelerated OpenGL ES 2.0 are also available.
All this gives developers some pretty decent options, and the ability to get your Android application onto the PlayBook with minimal fuss seems like a major boon, and a serious competitive advantage over something like the Palm TouchPad.
Then again, you don’t need a BlackBerry to check your mail on the TouchPad.
Does anyone know the status of QNX source availability?
AFAIK QNX is closed source. There are some QNX Neutrino RTOS ISOs to download, but there are no sources if i remember well. I saw that OpenBSD PF was imported some time ago into QNX, so i think it is very powerfull OS these days, and RIM just show it inside this tablet. I always believed (even 10 years ago or more) that QNX can be something for desktop and mobile, i just didn;t know i was so right about it. And android apps on it, was the first thing came to my mind when i heard that RIM will use QNX in their tablets. If they would want, they would build nice desktop OS with that too
Here ya go:
http://community.qnx.com/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.community/wik…
Were you planning on contributing to it or are you looking for ideological affirmation?
the latter. Clearly they are taking an Apple-esque approach with selling hardware coupled with software. Anyhow, I have contributed to open source projects – albeit no operating system kernels.
Edited 2011-03-26 01:18 UTC
If developers can make their apps run on both Android and Blackberry tablets by targeting only Android, then why target Blackberry?
A similar thing happened with OS/2. Developers tended to target Windows because the apps would run on both. This eventually meant there would be no killer OS/2 exclusive apps. This was a contributing factor in OS/2’s demise.
Is there any reason to think history wouldn’t be repeated?
One reason it might be different is due to how badly android partners have bungled the tablet space. Here we are, over a year since the iPad popped up and it’s still difficult to get a decent android tablet and at a decent price. It’s not clear at this point if Android is going to become the de facto default tablet OS. Apple, HP and RIM are real challengers.
Yes, same reason why android supports J2ME (3rd party app) and Adobe Flex, but developers still prefer to write android apps.
Actually there more reasons:
1) Games
– Performance not great enough
– They are easy to port using NDK and OpenGL
Can you run android NDK apps?
2) UI
– it will never integrate well into the OS
– for a complex app that uses CPP for business logic, the UI is actually simple to rewrite.
From my point of view this compatibility layer is for the tone of small and stupid apps, not for those killer apps.
It won’t, it’s simple:
– There are no killer apps (for what I know) for android or IPhone. Most important apps are on both phones.
– Today’s mobile space is not defined by killer apps, but by UI and maybe killer OS features, OS availability…
– BlackBerry already has a killer feature: blackberry connect. You and me might like android’s gmail app and (pseudo)push email, but business men, it’s all the way blackberry, nothing else they trust. It doesn’t even matter the awful browser or the UI…
By the way, blackberry connect will be ported to android. Will this mean the end of blackberry cellphones or the history will repeat itself (it was ported to WinCE, with no market success).
Edited 2011-03-25 07:56 UTC
The price disparity b/w Windows and OS/2, IBM’s lack of focus (OS/2 wasn’t even close to being its primary business, let alone its only business), the lack of Android only killer apps with nonportable data that have to be run in a virtual machine, expandability not being an issue…
The main problem with OS/2 was that the minimum hardware was a high spec 386-16 that cost over $10k. Windows 2.0 would run on an XT with 512k of RAM.
The OS/2 marketing campaign was absolutely atrocious – nuns and geriatric surfers talking nonsense and nothing about what OS/2 actually did.
Will Google let RIM put the Android Market on the PlayBook so users have access to the 200,000+ apps in it? Will users be able to use third party app stores like Appbrain and the Amazon Appstore for Android? Or because of RIM’s focus on security will they only let their users get apps from App World?
Also is Oracle going to sue RIM for the use of Java or do they already have a licensing agreement?
Second paragraph, second sentence.
So the Android Market will not be available. It’s BB App World only, which is smart.
RIM already had a Java license from Sun. The current BBOS is Java based, so RIM has lots of Java experience.
Sounds like that will suck for users though. Before reading this I was thinking about getting a Playbook, but I don’t want to have to buy apps twice.
I’m wondering if the converter will translate dalvik register machine byte code back into casual java classes.
That would be terribly silly.